This time last year, all eyes in Boulder County were on the mountains as plumes of smoke arose from the Fourmile Canyon Fire, forever clouding our vision of what is possible when wildfire and dense forest combine.
The devastating fire marked history as Colorado’s most destructive fire. The fire began the morning of Sept 6, 2010. Eleven days later, it was declared inactive after burning approximately 10 square miles and destroying nearly 170 homes. The mood in Boulder County was also burned.
“The Fourmile Fire is no surprise, but I think it’s hard to imagine that it’s going to happen here,” said David Lasky, firefighter and Sugarloaf resident. “You never expect the worst-case scenario to happen in your own backyard.”
This fall – one year after the fire – the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History is commemorating the Fourmile Canyon Fire with an exhibit called “Burning Issues: The Fourmile Canyon Fire,” focused on fire science in Colorado’s Front Range.
The exhibit began Tuesday, Sept. 6 in the museum’s BioLounge and is free and open to the public and schools. It will focus on the important ecological role of fire and what happened during the Fourmile Canyon Fire. The public is invited to discover the roles that climate, landscape, and human factors play in affecting fire activity and see how scientists reconstruct the region’s fire history with trees scarred from past burns and repeat photography from the early 1900s and present. The exhibit also features information on landscape changes following the fire and video interviews of firefighters, scientists, and local homeowners.
“Very high fire hazard and high severity fires are an inherent feature of the upper montane zone,” said Tom Veblen, CU-Boulder professor in geography. “The bottom line of why that was such a destructive fire is simply that people were living in a very vulnerable area.”
Veblen and his students have been studying the data and research findings surrounding long-term fire history in the region. Veblen will deliver two public presentations about the fire and related research. On Thursday, Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. he will present during the formal opening for the exhibit in the Paleontology Hall of the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. On Thursday, Oct. 27 at 7 p.m. Veblen will present “Fire in the Mountains: Understanding Fire History and Forest Dynamics in Colorado” at the Longmont Public Library.