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CRIME AND PUBLIC SAFETY |
BOULDER COUNTY’S MARSHALL FIRE AFTER-ACTION…


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CRIME AND PUBLIC SAFETY |
BOULDER COUNTY’S MARSHALL FIRE AFTER-ACTION REPORT RECOMMENDS IMPROVEMENTS TO
COMMUNICATION, ALERT SYSTEMS


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An after-action report on the response to the Marshall Fire, which burned this
home on Marshall Road and more than 1,000 others, recommended improvements to
Boulder County’s communications and alert systems that could help agencies
responding to fast-moving disasters. (Cliff Grassmick/Staff Photographer)
By Mitchell Byars | mbyars@prairiemountainmedia.com | Boulder Daily Camera
June 22, 2022 at 6:00 a.m.

An after-action report on the response to the Marshall Fire recommended
improvements to Boulder County’s communications and alert systems that could
help agencies responding to fast-moving disasters. Some of those improvements
are already in place or underway.

The Marshall Fire started near Colo. 93 on the afternoon of Dec. 30 and, powered
by high winds and burning through extremely dry fuels, quickly spread to more
than 6,000 acres and destroyed more than 1,000 homes.

Two people were also killed in the fire.

An after-action report on the response to the fire was posted Sunday on the
county’s website..



As far as response to fighting the fire itself, the report noted that drought
conditions and severe winds meant that “All attempts to halt the spread of this
fire under those conditions were doomed to fail.”

“The term ‘unprecedented’ has been overused in our culture,” the report read.
“That said, this was truly an unprecedented situation.”

But the report outlined several areas of the fire response that could be
improved, most of those regarding inter-agency communication and alert systems.

“Communications on the radio was nearly impossible,” the report read. “Cell
phone communication also proved to be difficult as cell towers quickly became
overloaded, and calls did not always go through in timely manner.”

The report recommended a “need to optimize communications between incident
command and dispatch.”



It also stressed improving inter-agency communications and holding regular
meetings with cities and towns to establish standard operating procedures.

“Having pre-established decision-making agreements will help with alert and
warning challenges during response,” the report read.

“We are committed to addressing the recommended improvements outlined in the
after-action report,” Louisville city officials said in a statement. “We
appreciate the urgency of these needs and have started to undertake and plan for
this work.

“The city of Louisville and Louisville Fire District were among the multiple
jurisdictions involved in the Marshall Fire response and participated in the
development of the (after-action report) along with the Boulder Office of
Emergency Management, Boulder County Sheriff’s Office and other partner
agencies. Recommendations were finalized in partnership with these agencies and
will require coordination to implement. Some items also require technology and
system changes that will take time to roll out. Louisville is committed to
collaborating with its partners and making these improvements.”

But while some of those recommendations will take time to implement, changes to
alert systems and evacuation procedures are already underway.

“There’s already a lot of work that has been done to accomplish that,” Boulder
County Sheriff’s Office Division Chief Curtis Johnson said.


WIRELESS EMERGENCY ALERTS

One of the other recommendations in the report was that Boulder County integrate
wireless alerts into its 911 dispatch centers for use in these types of
situations.

At the time of the Marshall Fire, Boulder County was still in the process of
putting in place its new Wireless Emergency Alert system, which is capable of
alerting cellphones within certain geographical areas without needing users to
sign up.

Johnson said because Everbridge is an opt-in system, many in the Marshall Fire
area weren’t familiar with it or had not signed up.

“The reality of our circumstances is mountain folks were opted in, but a lot of
us who live in the eastern portion of the county had not elected to opt in,”
said Johnson, who lost his home in the fire. “And part of that is we thought we
didn’t need to.”

But in addition to those who don’t opt in to Everbridge, officials said wireless
alerts can help visitors, unhoused people, hikers or people who just happen to
be away from landlines.

Boulder County has had a chance to use the new system in response to fires since
December. And while officials said the new system has allowed them to send out
notifications to a larger group of people even without registration, there have
been some drawbacks.

Specifically, the wireless system has had a tendency to send alerts to those who
were not in evacuation zones.

“On the good side, WEA allows us to alert every cellphone reasonably close to
the area we want to evacuate,” Johnson said. “The downside is there is a lot of
over alerting.”

Johnson said some older cellphones outside notification areas received the
alerts, as did cell phone users using certain third-party apps, including apps
utilizing news and weather alerts.

Johnson noted the technology was originally designed for hurricane alerts, which
usually meant informing larger areas of a pending event days in advance.

“The technology hasn’t been refined to the degree that it would be as effective
as we would like for a rapidly evolving emergency like a wind-driven wildfire,”
Johnson said. “With a fast-moving wildfire, we’re talking about a matter of
minutes to save lives.”

Boulder Fire-Rescue spokeswoman Marya Washburn noted that because the wireless
alert program uses the Federal Emergency Management Agencies’ Integrated Alert
and Warning System and also relies on the Federal Communications Commission for
cellphone changes, local agencies have to lobby for improvements rather than
simply implement them.

“Our ability to implement changes is much more delayed because we’re not the
primary drivers,” Washburn said.

Brad Riggin, the manager of the 911 communications center for the city of
Boulder, said only about 35% to 40% of wireless devices are equipped with the
newest WEA technology. When the city deployed wireless alerts in March for the
NCAR Fire, people as far away as Wyoming got alerts.

“The majority of people are going to get the message outside our intended area
until the FCC can work with cell providers,” Riggin said.

In addition, Riggin said the reliance on mobile devices means officials need to
account for cell towers in their evacuation zones. In the case of the NCAR Fire,
Riggin said an initial smaller evacuation map was created for the Everbridge
system. When wireless alerts were sent, they had to create a larger area to
incorporate cell towers.

But both of those maps were eventually posted online, leading to some residents
being unsure of whether or not they needed to evacuate.

“That led to confusion because two different map shapes got posted,” Riggin
said.

Riggin also noted cell phones with the older WEA technology can only receive up
to 90 characters. Newer phones can receive up to 360, but initially they had to
craft an alert that fit the 90-character limit.

Johnson said to try and combat some of these issues, the county is including a
link to further information in its wireless alerts.

“We needed to create a landing spot for information and direct people to it,”
Johnson said.

Riggin said the city is also including links, and has also now crafted some
pre-planned messages and will send out 90- and 360-character notifications.
Riggin said they have also now created a system in which the WEA alert area is
automatically posted online to streamline the process.

While they city has only deployed it once in real time, Riggin said approved
senders go through monthly trainings to walk through different scenarios.

“We want to try and get that practice in so we can always role play through it
and practice how we would do it in certain situations,” Riggin said.

But Johnson also noted that even if a person receiving an emergency alert is
quickly able to determine they are not in an evacuation area, over alerting
could lead to people being traumatized or eventually ignoring the alerts.

“Our community is very sensitive to fire danger right now, so we don’t want to
use WEA in a way that will impact people negatively that have already been
traumatized by a massive fire in December,” Johnson said.

Fire crews work along fire lines while battling the NCAR Fire as it moves east
on March 26, 2022, south of Boulder. The fire offered Boulder County a chance to
use its wireless emergency alert system. (Cliff Grassmick/Staff Photographer)

Washburn said for that reason, agencies need to be very selective in how often
they use wireless alerts.

“There were conversations about how (in) other areas of the country, people were
getting notification fatigue, that’s something other agencies had learned,”
Washburn said. “We’re going to be really intentional and only use those when we
absolutely need to, so people will know this is an important message to
consider.”

But Washburn noted the NCAR Fire was a perfect example of WEA’s positives, as
the amount of trails in the area necessitated notifying visitors and people away
from their landlines.

“It just increases our capacity to get the message out to as many people as
possible as quickly as possible,” Washburn said. “We always want to over notify
as opposed to under notify.

“We wish it could be a perfect system, and that only the exact number of people
we need to could be notified,” she added. “And maybe someday we will have that
technology, but at this current moment, we don’t.”


A NEW REALITY

The after action report also noted that, in some cases, “The fire was moving
faster than some of the evacuation orders could be developed and launched.”

Sirens were noted as one possible area to explore, as the county did not utilize
them during the fire.

Johnson said the thinking at the time was that the sirens are currently only
used for severe weather situations, which evoke a much different response than a
wildfire.

“There’s a concern about creating confusion,” Johnson said. “They hear a siren
and they decide to shelter in place rather than evacuating and running from a
fire.”

Johnson also said the sirens would likely have not been loud enough to be heard
over the winds on Dec. 30. For both those reasons, Johnson said the county will
explore a newer siren system that has louder speakers and can send out multiple
types of alerts.

“We do want to look at newer options and how we might use that, maybe to at
least get people’s attention,” Johnson said.

To help speed the evacuation process, the report also recommended that the
county establish evacuation “polygons,” pre-determined evacuation areas.

Johnson said those polygons were already in place for western Boulder County,
where officials believed wildfires were most likely. But now the entire county
is being mapped, and evacuation areas are being drawn with wireless alerts in
mind to avoid the type of confusion seen with the NCAR Fire.

“Previously, we had predrawn a number of evacuation areas for the mountain
communities,” Johnson said. “An incident commander could look at those and
that’s all they would have to tell us, evacuate that area, and we could pull
that up in Everbridge and launch evacuations very quickly.

“Now we’re mapping the entire county so that we have predrawn evacuation areas
throughout the county. And we’ll have them drawn in a way that it works with
what WEA requires.”

In addition, Johnson said a new communication plan has been created that is
centered around different radio frequencies used in flatter areas but not in
mountain areas that should help communication.

As with the polygons, a communication plan for the flatter areas of the county
had not been in place because those areas were not considered fire dangers. In
fact, many of the recommendations in the report stem from a newfound
understanding that wildfire danger is no longer an issue just for the Boulder
County foothills.

“Historically, fires have occurred in the mountain parts of the county. Post
Marshall Fire, we really saw we needed to expand our ability to alert and warn
people throughout the county.” Johnson said. “(The Marshall Fire) has changed
the landscape of how we look at fire danger in Boulder County, because we know
that when the conditions are like they were on Dec. 30, we can have a
fast-moving wildfire that impacts urban areas in our county and can be
devastating.”

The Superior Historical Museum, pictured June 21, 2022, was destroyed in the
Marshall Fire. (Cliff Grassmick/Staff Photographer)





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MITCHELL BYARS | REPORTER/ SOCIAL MEDIA SPECIALIST

Mitchell Byars has been reporting for the Daily Camera since 2011, covering
breaking news and courts. He is originally from Hawaii and enjoys the beach,
camping, golf, beer and writing third-person bios about himself that exaggerate
how outdoorsy he is.
mbyars@prairiemountainmedia.com
Follow Mitchell Byars @mitchellbyars


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