We Haven’t Learned the Right Lesson from the Marshall Fire

On December 30, 2021, the Marshall Fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Boulder County in a matter of hours. Not days. Hours. For many Coloradans, the Marshall Fire shattered a deeply held assumption about wildfire risk: that wildfire is primarily a forest problem. It wasn’t.

The Marshall Fire was largely a grass-fueled, wind-driven urban conflagration. Once structures began igniting, homes themselves became fuel. Embers traveled miles. Entire neighborhoods burned despite being far from dense forests. Yet nearly five years later, many of the public wildfire risk maps used by homeowners, policymakers, insurers, and planners still struggle to represent this reality.

A recent criticism of the Colorado State Forest Service’s Wildfire Risk Viewer highlighted exactly this concern. The map correctly identifies wildland fire intensity across the landscape but appears less capable of representing how risk evolves once fire enters the built environment. The criticism may be blunt. The underlying issue is not. It’s one of the most important challenges in wildfire science today.

Read the full article on Substack: https://omnigeo.substack.com/p/we-havent-learned-the-right-lesson