We got two for one in this week’s premier for the 2024 Mountain Living Speaker Series. We planned to hear from Raina Eshleman from the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office.

Coming along with her was a local partner in the program she’s administering, Tom Hausfeld, who is Coordinator for the Fire Adapted Community Alliance (FACA), a committee of the Board of the Glacier View Fire Protection District.

Here’s the 50-minute program with both speakers. Skip to 5:25 minutes in, to avoid the technical and distracting elements from the live presentation.

Raina presented a tool the Sheriff’s Office is offering that enables full documentation of home hardening measures to assist in homeowner insurance issues that seem to be emerging with wildland interface fires.

The Home Ignition Zone Assessment is done by two volunteer ambassadors from the local fire-protection district, with a focus on identifying for homeowner use any areas of increased risk for wildfire.

Raina went step-by-step through the Assessment, to give concrete examples of what the ambassadors do and to show what the final report looks like.

The results of this assessment can also support a growing number of grant opportunities to help fund home improvements, such as the Community Wildfire Defense Grant Program, from the US Forest Service.

Tom, a neighbor of Glacier View Meadows living in Red Feather Highlands, gave a brief review of community wildfire preparation efforts.

He described the four initiatives of the Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP):

• Annual Firewise Event
• Grant seeking
• Ambassadors doing the Assessment
• Active mitigation of hazards in our common areas.

Finally, he spent time explaining the challenges of managing the by-product of mitigation, the accumulation of cuttings as slash piles.

A solution to the challenges has been the development among communities and agencies to acquire and operate an Air Burner device, essentially a large dumpster with a forced air fan technology that scours the air and provides total elimination of all residues.

A demonstration of an Air Burner is scheduled for Saturday morning, April 27, at Gate 3 of Glacier View Meadows. Watch for announcement of details.

Tom finished his presentation with an appeal for volunteers. He and his team are looking for folks to sign up for the Home Ignition Zone Assessment, and the program is looking for volunteers for each of the four committees, plus the need for support in public communication, particular with their website and with postings to Next Door.

For more information or to volunteer, contact the Glacier View Fire Protection District, either on their website or directly by telephone at 970.493.3353.