Overview:
As drought grips Boulder County, officials advise residents to prepare for faster-moving wildfires and take precautions to reduce fire risk.
Wildfire has long been part of Boulder County’s landscape, but local fire officials and mitigation experts say residents should prepare for a new reality: Fires are not just a summer concern anymore.
After a warm, dry winter and an early stretch of red flag warnings, Boulder County residents are facing a fire risk shaped by drought, dry vegetation and high winds. The question for many homeowners is no longer whether wildfire could threaten their neighborhood, but how quickly it could spread if one starts.
“I think it’s drier than I’ve ever seen it in my 25 years living here,” said Maxwell Story, owner and head arborist at Front Range Tree Care.
The city of Boulder entered a drought watch on April 1 after record hot and dry weather, asking residents to voluntarily reduce water use throughout the summer. Drought conditions matter for fire risk because snowpack acts as one of the West’s most important natural reservoirs. When winter snowpack is low and spring conditions are dry, grasses, shrubs and trees lose moisture earlier, giving fire more fuel.
“This year we have had double the red flag days already by this time than we had last year,” said Jamie Barker, PIO at the City of Boulder Fire Headquarters.
Barker said Boulder is not necessarily seeing more fires than last year, but the fires that do start take off.
“We’re seeing the same number of fires this year as we did last year,” Barker said. “We’re just seeing them grow a lot faster.”
Dry vegetation catches and burns faster than plants with stored moisture. Paired with Boulder County’s strong winds, that can quickly turn a small fire into something much harder to control.
“We have been experiencing wind in a way we really haven’t,” Barker said.
During high-wind events, fire can begin moving with the wind so quickly that firefighters may not be able to attack it directly. Barker compared the challenge to other natural disasters that cannot simply be stopped in the moment.
“We talk about fighting fires, but we don’t talk about fighting hurricanes,” Barker said. “We don’t send a group of teams out there to stop the winds of a hurricane, and so it’s becoming a little bit more similar to that in terms of natural disasters.”
Those conditions are also changing how local officials talk about fire season. What was once treated as a predictable summer period has become more fluid.
“We don’t even say there is a fire season anymore,” said Jeff Logan, an administrative team member at Boulder Wildfire Partners. “This is the first year that it’s been a full 12-month fire season.”
Roughly 90% of fires in Boulder County are caused by people. Human-caused fires can start accidentally, through carelessness or intentionally. Sparks from machinery, equipment malfunctions, improperly extinguished campfires, cigarettes, fireworks, hot coals and illegal burns can all create dangerous ignition points.
“Just this year, that we’ve been investigating, the confirmation of the fire that we can come up with is that it is not caused by a severe weather pattern going through, like lightning or by a downed power line,” Barker said. “So by deductive properties, it’s more than likely human-caused within that human-caused space, though I don’t know that we can definitively say if one thing that people do causes it more than others.”
That means prevention depends heavily on everyday decisions. Residents can reduce risk by following fire restrictions, avoiding outdoor burning on windy days, fully extinguishing campfires and charcoal, keeping vehicles off dry grass and never tossing cigarette butts outside.
Homeowners can also reduce risk around their properties through wildfire mitigation.
“Fire mitigation is getting natural material and flammable material away from a structure or property,” Story said. “Specifically for juniper trees and bushes. Because they tend to catch on fire, like a match head. They go quickly, they burn hot, and they’re often very close to homes.”
Boulder County’s 2026 wildfire mitigation rebate program offers eligible residents up to $500 for mitigation work, including actions that reduce flammable vegetation near homes. Story also recommends using the “cool to the touch” method for anything that has been burning.
“If you have any sort of anything that was on fire, you have to touch it and make sure that it’s not hot,” Story said. “Because if it is, it can respark and light on fire.”
The memory of the Marshall Fire still shapes how Boulder County thinks about wildfire preparedness. On Dec. 30, 2021, the fire spread through Louisville, Superior and unincorporated Boulder County, destroying more than 1,000 homes and forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate. It remains the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history.
“For me, it was a complete shock,” said Nathan Debarros, who lost his home during the Marshall Fire. “My parents broke down immediately, which is always crazy to see.”
Debarros said his family had little time to process what was happening.
“This is something we were not expecting,” Debarros said. “We packed stuff in backpacks. None of us thought our house was going to get burned down.”
For officials, the Marshall Fire exposed the importance of emergency communication, evacuation planning and public alerts. Barker said Boulder has since worked to improve notifications, alerts and emergency information systems.
“We have done a ton of work related to emergency notifications, emergency alerts, information available on the app and putting out electronic wireless communications,” Barker said. “That is, in part, a result of the feedback but the issues that we had during the Marshall Fire.”
The fire also shifted attention eastward. Historically, much of Boulder County’s wildfire prevention work focused on mountain communities west of town, where forests and steep terrain were seen as the most obvious risks. The Marshall Fire showed that grassland communities and suburban neighborhoods can also face catastrophic fire under the right conditions.
That lesson is especially important now, as drought and wind continue to redefine where and when wildfire risk exists. For residents, officials say the message is simple: Sign up for emergency alerts, know more than one evacuation route, follow fire restrictions and reduce flammable material around homes before smoke appears on the horizon.
In Boulder County, wildfire preparation is no longer something to save for summer. It is becoming part of living here.
“We have stopped saying that we have a fire season,” Barker said. “For us, fire season is any time where it is super dry and the winds are super high, and that can be any time of year.”
