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Stage one fire restrictions limit fires in the foothills but keep the rules relaxed in suburban areas.
GRAND COUNTY, Colo. — Fire restrictions are not dictated by haze in the sky or the knowledge that three counties are dealing with wildfires.
A scientific matrix helps determine if counties enact fire restrictions, and even that science allows for fires in certain circumstances.
Jefferson County has bucked the fire restriction matrix and enacted stage one fire restrictions for the unincorporated parts of the county in the foothills.
Even those restrictions allowed for campfires in permanent fire pits, like at the Twisted Pine property run by the Girl Scouts.
“They didn’t do anything wrong at all. I’m here to say that they’re a fantastic neighbor,” Genesee resident Steve Jacobson said. “I don’t think you’ll find many residents in this whole area that’s having an open fire other than visitors that are coming up into the area that just don’t understand the risks.”
The fire did not violate any restrictions. A spokeswoman with the Girl Scouts said the fire was extinguished, but law enforcement came to confirm the fire was out and thanked the girls for their compliance.
“Any type of an ember scares all of the Front Range foothill residents and anybody backing open space because we’ve all experienced what a disaster that can be,” Jacobson said.
The Girl Scouts said it would start a full fire ban on the camp property as of Thursday and would instead sing campfire songs around colorful paper or flowers.
“If it’s within regulations, I’m OK with it,” Stacee Martin with Jefferson County’s Incident Management Team said.
Jefferson County is in stage one fire restrictions, which limits open burning in unincorporated parts of the county but not suburban areas.
“Think about Jefferson County,” Martin said. “It’s a rather large county, and if applying it to, say, downtown Ken Caryl, does that make sense as, say, Evergreen? Probably not. Stage one is for unincorporated Jefferson County. Think about that. It’s the foothills. It’s got a lot more trees, a lot more dried out steep terrain that is going to make it tough for firefighters if they have to defend either a house fire or a wildland fire.”
In Grand County, the fire danger went from “high” to “very high” on Thursday. Yet there are no fire restrictions.
“Currently there are no fire restrictions because the matrix that our state and federal partners use dictated that we did not need to go into fire restrictions just yet,” Alexis Kimbrough, Grand County’s Emergency Management Director, said.
The matrix she described considers things like how dry the grasses and pine needles have become and the weather outlook.
Several agencies will get information on Friday, review it over the weekend, meet on Monday and then present any recommendations on fire restrictions to the county commissioners on Tuesday.
“Our process has been used for years, tested, and we’re confident in it,” Kimbrough said.
Grand County will stay with that process regardless of the current wildfires burning in Larimer, Boulder and Jefferson counties.
“We prefer to stick to a process because there are tons of what-if situations,” Kimbrough said.
“None of us want to be told what to do and I am certainly one of those people,” Jacobson said. “The government can’t tell us all what to do and what not to do, I think we need to all use our common sense on when to do that.”
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