As wildfires rage along the Front Range, the first and most important tasks are saving lives and containing the spread.
The next step is figuring out how the fire started and who or what is responsible.
Colorado is now better equipped to do that than ever before.
In 2023, lawmakers passed a bill to direct nearly $3 million per year to the state Department of Safety to build a fire investigations unit.
The appropriation came after a CPR News investigation found that Colorado had the worst record in the West for determining the cause of wildfires.
What are the resources on the new state wildfire investigations team?
The new state team includes eight investigators split evenly between eastern and western Colorado, with a branch chief overseeing the two units who also can investigate wildfires. That’s nine total investigators, plus a dog named Ash who's trained to detect accelerants.
Previously, there was only one investigator and an accelerant dog, so this is a major change in the state’s investigative capacity.
“It really is, but it was necessary,” said Chris Brunette, Colorado Fire and Life Safety section chief. “There were a lot of fires going on uninvestigated in Colorado.”
In Colorado, local fire departments are responsible for investigating wildfires. But many are small or volunteer-run, and don’t have the capacity to do the tedious work of determining the cause of a fire.
Brunette said the state has worked to inform local authorities that they are available to help, and he said they have “almost tripled” the number of fires the state helps to investigate. He expects that number to continue to grow rapidly as the fire season progresses.
How do wildfire investigations work?
The state has been called in by local authorities to assist on the Stone Canyon fire near Lyons, Brunette said. Three investigators and the accelerant dog have been dispatched to help.
The state hasn’t been called to help on the other large wildfires yet, but he anticipates they will be.
The investigators, Brunette said, will look at the overall fire and try to narrow down a small area where they believe it started, “and then from there they go in and look for micro indicators, this could be something as small as a blade of grass and which way it burnt first.”
They will look at weather reports and eliminate causes like lightning, though most fires are human-caused.
Brunette cautioned that the process of determining the cause and who might be responsible will take time.
“It could be days or even months before we can really tell exactly what this was,” Brunette said.
Active wildfires in Colorado:
- Stone Canyon fire: One person dead, at least two homes destroyed in wildfire burning near Lyons
- Alexander Mountain fire: Large wildfire burning near Loveland is in ‘a tough place to fight’
- Quarry fire: Wildfire burning in south Jefferson County triggers evacuations near Deer Creek Canyon
- Lake Shore fire: Residents evacuated in Boulder County as fourth wildfire erupts in northern Front Range
