CWPP Update – 2025 Wildfire Preparedness Commitments

By Jody Dickson, CCCFPD CWPP Implementation Committee

Happy New Year!  We hope you enjoyed your holidays and are ready to kick into gear for 2025.  The start of a new year is always a great time to set your intentions and visions for the year to come.  As we humans tend not to be very successful in keeping to resolutions, I prefer to come up with a list of things I want to commit to doing in the year to come. They can be new things that I want to try or learn how to do.  They can be simple and small improvements I want to make in my life. They can be ways that I commit to acting on my values. This approach also allows me to purposefully set some specific commitments to different aspects of my life, so there is always healthy variety on my list!  

Those of us on the CWPP Implementation Committee with our Community Ambassadors are obviously passionate about wildfire preparedness. There are a lot of different reasons each one of us does this work which result in a lot of different ideas, approaches, and activity.  So in honor of the new year, we are providing a list of 25 things you could commit to in 2025 for wildfire.

1. Draft an evacuation list.  Make versions relative to how much time you have to pack: 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, 5 hours, 24 hours

2. Get a home assessment to determine what you can do to protect your structure (e.g. Boulder County’s Wildfire Partners program)

3. Remove all flammable materials within 5 ft of your structures. (see section 3.a of the CWPP)

4. Review the Annual Safety Measures and Home Maintenance list (see page 58 of the CWPP)

5. Contact your Community Ambassador to find out what is happening in your plan unit and where you might be able to help

6. Pack a go-bag for an evacuation.

7. Implement at least one item on your home hardening recommendations (see page 5 of the CWPP Resident Action Plan)

8. Sign up for emergency notifications with Boulder, Gilpin and Jefferson Counties.  (see page 63 of the CWPP)

9. Attend wildfire mitigation, forest health and evacuation education events

10. Remove ladder fuels between 5 and 30 ft of your structures (see page 7 of the CWPP Resident Action Plan)

11. Have a forester mark the trees beyond 30 ft of your structure for fuel reduction and forest health 

12. Talk to your neighbors about how you can help each other prepare for a wildfire and evacuation.

13. Volunteer at a community wildfire mitigation event and with our various wildfire mitigation organizations

14. Practice a variety of routes through the canyon in case your standard route is closed in an evacuation.

15. Bring slash to a community slash event, county sort yard or roadside chipping events.

16. Order your green reflective sign from the fire department

17. Work with your community to make your evacuation routes passable during a wildfire, including your driveway. (see section 3.a. of the CWPP)

18. Contact United Power about trees near your power lines.

19. Join the CWPP Implementation Committee or another group working on the community-scale projects

20. Inform your government representatives how important wildfire mitigation is and what resources communities need to support getting the work done.

21. Join with your neighbors to build a mitigation project in your neighborhood to amplify the impact of mitigation

22. Get certified for pile burning to learn proper slash pile burning methods.

23. Review your homeowner’s insurance as many homeowners are underinsured.

24. Make a plan for evacuating your pets and livestock

25. Read the full CWPP or Resident Action Plan on the CoalCreekCWPP.org website

Pick one (or more) of the above or make your own wildfire preparedness commitment for 2025. As I’ve always said, there is something for everyone to do, and if we all do a little something, together we’ll get a lot done!

The CWPP Community Ambassadors are here to help.  Links to the full CWPP and many related resources are available on our website at www.CoalCreekCWPP.org. If you have any questions please contact your Community Ambassador or us at CWPPforCCC@gmail.com. Thank you, again, for your fantastic support and activity to get this work done.