Here is a quick rundown of what you missed if you couldn’t attend the big CWPP Kickoff meeting last month. We learned some impressive numbers and other urgent info to share here.
Community Meeting Report
Over 100 people attended the meeting in person and 25 Zoomed in from home.
Even with a fierce April snowstorm bearing down, the intrepid CCC folks showed up for a very informative presentation on our Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) by the Ember Alliance Team. For this we thank you!
Fire District Chief Garret Ball opened the meeting with some interesting facts:
The Coal Creek Canyon Fire Protection District (CCCFPD) covers 52 square miles. There are about 1,800 addresses in the District and most are residences. There are almost 4,000 people living in the District.
These folks live in one of three counties: Boulder, Gilpin or Jefferson. Less than half the residents in the District have signed up for their county’s emergency notifications system!
• Sign up on www.CoalCreekCanyonFD.org, go to Community Resources, then click on the Emergency Notifications tab.
• Chief Ball says Gilpin and Jefferson County residents should ALSO sign up for the Boulder County emergency alert system.
Our Fire Department is staffed by 60 trained volunteer firefighters. Those firefighters spent a total of 7,633 hours in training and response to emergency calls last year. To help them protect us, we are each asked to spend a few hours making our homes and neighborhoods more fire adapted.
We must stop saying, “If a fire comes.” We live with fire constantly!
In the last year, our firefighters responded to over 70 calls related to wildland fire right here in the District. Each were already – or had the potential to become – a wildland fire (lightning strikes, vehicle fires, illegal or abandoned campfires, downed powerlines, etc.) That averages nearly six possible wildland fire ignitions per month! In Red Flag weather conditions, any one of those ignitions could have started “the big one.”
CWPP presentation by the team from The Ember Alliance:
At the meeting we learned what a Wildfire Protection Plan covers, why not having a major fire here in over 100 years is bad news and how periodic fire is beneficial to our forests, how the CWPP can help us become fire adapted communities, and why our communities were broken into 15 Plan Units.
• See the Plan Unit map on our website.
• The CWPP will outline specific risk reduction methods for each Plan Unit.
We also learned why many of the roads in our communities will be designated as currently “unsurvivable” in a fire evacuation scenario, and what we can do to change that designation.
Go to our website at www.CoalCreekCWPP.org
If you missed the Community Meeting, you can watch it on YouTube:
Just click on the link above.
The CCCFPD Community Outreach Team is making great progress.
We now have a master email list of 376 CCC residents. That’s about 12% of the (adult) District population. Momentum is growing! We hope to have at least 500 folks signed up by year’s end.
• Visit our website to join the email list and receive up to date information on progress of the CWPP and how to implement the wildfire mitigation recommendations therein.
Attend a Focus Group at your local fire station!
Come see some impressive maps of how a wildfire would affect your community, which roads would not be usable for evacuation, how long it would take you to get out of the District in an emergency evacuation, and more. Share your biggest concerns with the Fire Department. We need your input! Please RSVP using the button on our homepage.
Thursday nights from 6:30 – 8:00 pm as follows:
June 8 – Station #1, 30579 HWY 72
Plan Units: Chute Road, Crescent Park, Hilltop, Pika and Vonnie Claire.
June 15 – Station #2, 32895 HWY 72
Plan Units: Camp Eden, Coal Creek Heights, Copperdale, Miramonte, Wondervu
June 22 – Station #3 (under construction) Rech Barn, 8856 Blue Mountain Drive
Plan Units: Blue Mountain, Central Canyon, Plainview
June 29 – Station #4, 34697 Gap Road
Plan Units: Burke, Upper Twin Spruce (Lyttle Dowdle, Nadm, Stanton)
Give us your input by taking the Fire Department’s Community Survey.
Go to our website. You’ll find a link to the Survey on the homepage. Please take 15 minutes and fill it out today!