NFPA Journal - Summer 2023 - 38

20
23
C&E
PREVIEW
in wildfire-exposed areas that were truly safe; my
response was simply that I didn't know, since there are
nearly no examples to point to. Many were surprised
to learn how lightly modern standards and planning
tools had been applied across wildfire-prone regions.
Professors in the classes I spoke to told me how much
students appreciated the food for thought that I provided,
and even how energized some of them were
about changing future outcomes, especially around
applying design and construction regulations.
But saying it and doing it are two different things, as
we experienced following the Marshall Fire. Bob Sullivan,
NFPA's Southwest regional director, had worked
throughout 2021 to initiate policy conversations and
to build trust with state agencies in Colorado, which
now faced a major crisis. At the start of 2022, Bob was
invited to be part of the Colorado Fire Commission
and its Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) subcommittee
to offer NFPA's perspective on the value of statewide
regulations and guidelines governing construction and
land use in areas prone to wildfires. I provided testimony
to the subcommittee on the value of statewide
standards to address the risk that is nearly uniform
across the state, standards that can also help level the
playing field for builders and developers and increase
safety equitably for all parts of Colorado.
Understanding that Colorado is a home-rule state
where municipal (town/city/county) governments
have significant influence and are often averse to
state control, I also pointed out that Colorado residents
have been actively engaged in Firewise USA,
our voluntary wildfire mitigation program, for many
years. With the third-largest number of participants
in any state in the country, representing more than
100,000 residents, Colorado can boast a significant
number of true believers, people who understand the
value of wildfire risk reduction and who are willing to
act accordingly. I noted findings of NFPA's public surveys
that indicate that most Americans expect safety
in the built environment, and that most expect the
homes they purchase to be designed to keep them
safe. My hope was to encourage elected officials to
draw on these sentiments as part of their rationale for
safety standards, and to bolster their defense against
the utterly predictable noise from those with vested
interests in the status quo who would soon be shouting
about how " expensive " any new code or standard
was going to be.
While state and local officials in Colorado had
been working for years toward slowly improving
community wildfire resilience, there had been hesitancy
to challenge local control with state-level
solutions to the problem. Immediately following
the Marshall Fire, however, there was new urgency
from the governor's office and across the state to act
swiftly to try to ensure this kind of disaster wouldn't
be repeated. The tone in the subcommittee meetings
seemed to me to reflect a sober recognition, and perhaps
resignation, that future years would continue
to break records for " worst fire " unless something
38 | NFPA JOURNAL * SUMMER 2023
changed. In the first meeting I attended, representatives
who we feared might remain entrenched in
a hard stance of local control acknowledged that
the wildfire risk existed statewide and therefore
warranted a statewide approach.
Throughout 2022, though, as members of the
state's subcommittee met frequently to discuss the
path forward as directed by their governor, the talks
started to sound more like negotiations. Participants
voiced concerns about how state rules would be
enforced and how and whether local governments
would receive technical assistance. At a few points,
some people suggested rules so watered down that
they might as well not even bother. But the process
prevailed, and as of this writing a state senate bill,
SB23-166, has cleared its first hurdle. If passed, the
bill would create a statewide " Wildfire Resiliency
Code Board " that would be administered by the
state's fire agency and would adopt a statewide code
by 2025. Mirroring the diverse representation on the
subcommittee meetings, the proposed board would
have 24 members, only three of whom would be nonvoting,
from an array of entities public and private,
statewide and local. While safety advocates cannot yet
declare victory, I am watching the process with hope,
not only for solutions in Colorado, but that it could
serve as a model for other states around the country.
REAL AND RADICAL CHANGE
Legislative activity in 2021 and 2022 was not limited
to states suffering major wildfire losses. The Infrastructure
Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the
Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, created the Wildland
Fire Mitigation and Management Commission and
was perhaps the most significant piece of legislation
affecting wildfire policy and funding in the last
century. The act also directed the U.S. Forest Service
to create a funding program called the Community
Wildfire Defense Grant. Federal funding began to
flow to states, municipalities, tribal organizations,
and nonprofit organizations, aimed at implementing
actions identified in up-to-date local community
wildfire protection plans, or to update or create such
plans where they were outdated or absent.
This flow of funding created excitement in the
media but also frustration among wildfire safety
practitioners. Just how much frustration became
clear to me during the Outthink Wildfire Summit
organized and hosted by NFPA last May in California.
Representatives from 40 organizations spent two
days focusing on policy approaches to address the
huge number of existing homes on wildfire-prone
landscapes across the country. The group broke into
smaller segments to tackle different elements of
the issue, and I was able to talk about funding and
finances with representatives from state government,
academia, local government, and others. I was surprised
to discover that California, with all its financial
and technical resources, was struggling to get funding
applied to projects that would help mitigate risks to
NFPA Journal - Summer 2023

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