When wildfires forced thousands of people to evacuate along the Front Range last week, many had a lot of time to wait and worry.
At a shelter in Loveland, Jenny Coll worried about the fate of her home, her Airbnb business, her husband鈥檚 studio, and the load of laundry she was forced to quickly leave behind as the fire grew.
鈥淭his one impacts me big,鈥� she said of the Alexander Mountain Fire. 鈥淚t鈥檚 frightening.鈥�
Coll had other questions. How was the fire allowed to get out of control? Could the state have done more to detect and extinguish it before it blew up?
鈥淲e need to do something differently,鈥� she said. 鈥淭here are too many people now in Colorado not to have that early detection.鈥�
Investigators are still looking into the circumstances of all four major wildfires that erupted on the Front Range.
As it turns out, Colorado lawmakers have repeatedly rejected some popular forms of early detection in recent years.
Since 2019, they have quietly voted down bills aiming to buy panoramic cameras that use artificial intelligence and heat sensors to spot fires more than a hundred miles away. Other Western states have deployed hundreds of them with the hope of helping firefighters get a jump on blazes before they turn into disasters.
Instead, Colorado has spent tens of millions of dollars on helicopters and other gadgets to fight fires. Legislators also point to a little-known military program run by the National Guard they say is doing a better job at defending the state.
It鈥檚 called .
鈥淭hey have individuals watching the entire state of Colorado through satellite imagery, and they spot just the tiniest amount of smoke,鈥� State Rep. Tammy Story, D-Jefferson County, said last fall. 鈥淲ith the satellite imagery that they have available, I don't think investing in additional wildfire cameras around the state is what we need to be doing.鈥�
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But firefighters say this satellite-based fire system has some blind spots, and should not be viewed as a replacement for other tools that work together to detect fires.
Mike Morgan, director of Colorado鈥檚 Division of Fire Prevention and Control, said satellite technology is weather dependent.
鈥淢any of the sensing technologies cannot see through clouds,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f we're on a really cloudy day and we're trying to look at lightning strikes (starting fires), anything that we're doing at high levels above ground level become real challenging.鈥�
In that case, Morgan said cameras that are closer to ground level are much more effective.
The state also relies on a fleet of aircraft with heat sensors to help scan for fires.
Still, Morgan said FireGuard is useful. He said it detected about 75 fires in Colorado last year.
鈥淎bout 10 to 15 percent of the time, it was finding something prior to a 911 call,鈥� Morgan said.
Little is publicly known about how the FireGuard program works, though. Even Morgan can鈥檛 disclose exactly how it gets all of its data because some information is classified. Some firefighters in parts of Colorado that are the most prone to blazes have barely heard of FireGuard.
KUNC 暗黑爆料 called four fire departments around the state, and three out of four could not provide an example of the FireGuard system detecting a significant blaze.
鈥淚 have not utilized it, and I鈥檓 still not sure how I would utilize it,鈥� Steamboat Springs Fire Rescue Chief Chuck Cerasoli said in June. 鈥淲e haven't been reached out to and said, 鈥楬ey, you know, fire chief, here's how you can use this program. Here's what you can do.鈥欌��
Cerasoli said he鈥檇 welcome the addition of wildfire cameras in his region, but he would need help securing funding.
One such camera near Breckenridge helped firefighters detect and put out a wildfire last month before it could get out of control.
State lawmakers will meet later this month to discuss potential wildfire prevention measures to purchase next year.
Touring the evacuation center in Loveland last week, state Rep. Judy Amabile (D-District 49) said she鈥檇 be open to investing in more early detection tools.
She added she鈥檚 open to learning more about the cameras.
鈥淚 haven't spent a deep dive on that, and I think if it works and it's cost-effective, yeah, we should probably do that,鈥� she said.
