COLORADO PROPOSES 'REVOLUTIONARY' FIRE AND FLOOD WARNING
SYSTEM, BUT MONEY'S AN ISSUE
Jan 21, 2015
Colorado leaders are looking to establish a "revolutionary" wildfire-
and flood-prediction system that could give public-safety officials accurate
assessments of the disasters' movements 12 hours before they occur.
To fund the system, which was developed from 20 years of
studies by the Boulder-based National Center for Atmospheric Research, the
Legislature would be required to pass a bill introduced Tuesday that would put
$10 million to the project over the next five years.
If approved, the $10 million would be spent at a time when
elected officials say money is tight and fights over budget allotments are
expected.
To Rep. Tracy Kraft-Tharp, the Arvada Democrat who is
sponsoring House Bill 1129, the potential to save businesses, homes and even
lives exceeds concerns over the cost of the project.
She believes the state could prove with the effort that it
can bring locally developed, property-saving technology to bear far more
quickly than the federal government.
And she said with 12 hours of warning, officials could have
pushed back more during disasters like the 2013 Lyons floods and Waldo Canyon
fire in Colorado Springs, and they could have been less financially
devastating.
"This is about taking this new technology and
customizing it. Basically, Colorado will be the test-bed state,"
Kraft-Tharp said. "Two million dollars [a year] is a lot of money, but
it's not a lot when you're looking at saving the town of Lyons."
Much of the work that goes into predicting fire and floods
now is done with 1970s and 1980s technology involving scattered observation
stations and historical data, said Bill Mahoney, deputy director of NCAR's
research applications laboratory.
In the mid-1990s, his organization began researching how to
couple fire-behavior predictions with weather predictions to understand not
just simple movements, but extreme behaviors like fire whirls, back-burning and
splitting and merging.
What it developed was a system based on evolving weather
conditions that can offer 12-hour predictions and update them continuously
throughout the day — a system, he said, that would have predicted the
thunderstorm-fueled reversal of the Yarnell Hill fire in Arizona that surprised
and killed 19 firefighters.
But while partially federally funded organizations like his
can develop such ground-breaking technology, the federal government takes many
years to turn it into a usable product, he said.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper grew "very, very
excited" when NCAR presented its research at the Western Governors
Association conference last year and began talking to organization leaders
about how the state could be the first to adopt and use the technology, Mahoney
said. HB 1129, which has been assigned to the House Agriculture, Livestock and
Natural Resources Committee, is the result of those discussions.
The bill would require the Department of Public Safety, the
same department charged with establishing an Colorado aerial firefighting
fleet, to enter into a contract with "an organization" — bills don't
name specific businesses or organizations outside the state government — to
establish, customize and maintain a Colorado prediction decision and support
system regarding wildfires and floods.
It also allows the state to accept gifts, grants or
donations in addition to state funding for the development of the system.
"This is revolutionary. This is not just a new
evolution in the world of first responders," Kraft-Tharp said.
The bill also is drawing support from private businesses. Anchor
Point Group LLC, a Boulder company that specializes in wildland fire planning
and risk assessment, would like to integrate a more accurate fire-behavior
prediction system into its overall hazard and risk analysis, and COO Chris
White said he believes other Colorado business and home owners should support
the development of this system as well.
"Colorado homes, businesses, energy, utility and
transportation infrastructure, as well as our water supply, are at risk from
wildfire," White said. "Tools and technology that help define our
exposure, risk and provide situational awareness for the firefighting community
should be supported."