DOUGLAS COUNTY, Colo — Some community members living in Roxborough, Sterling Ranch and the surrounding areas have a growing concern about how they would evacuate their neighborhoods in case of a wildfire.
"If we had a fire here, we would be at risk," said Tiffany Milburn, who lives nearby. "If we all needed to evacuate at the same time, there's not enough infrastructure to allow us to all leave safely together."
"If a fire comes in quickly, what do we do?" she continued. "A lot of us worry about that when a fire is nearby, and especially during fire season.
Viewers began reaching out to Denver7 earlier this year to share their concerns about how they could get to safety if a wildfire threatened their neighborhood.
They asked Denver7 to look into the issue further, with one person saying a recent fire nearby gave a Roxborough neighborhood "a mere glimpse of what would occur if we had orders to evacuate."
We started to reach out to residents and connected with Milburn.
She doesn't only live in the community — she is also the founder and president of Colorado Wildlife Crossing, an organization "advocating for a wildlife crossing on Wadsworth" that has now shifted its focus toward advocating for more urgency surrounding evacuation risks in the neighborhood.
Milburn told Denver7 she has watched the rapid pace of nearby developments and worries about how it could impact a potential emergency evacuation.
"I was driving down Waterton Road, which is one of our main roads here, recently and I looked at how quickly they were building another apartment complex. And I just said, 'This is too fast, this is too much. Our roads cannot handle this.'"
Others share her worries, like Fran Santagata.
She has lived in the Chatfield Farm East neighborhood for two decades.
"My concerns today really reflect a lot of what Tiffany has said about how the capacity on our roadways is not adequate right now for the pace of the buildout of the new communities," Santagata said. "Let me stress: I am not against the development. I am really about, let's get ahead of the congestion right now before we're actually in an evacuation scenario."
Bob Byrne, chair for the Roxborough Park Fire Mitigation Committee, knows about these worries all too well.
"We live in what's called a wildland urban interface," he explained. "So, we are in the wildland and, living in the wildland, you have to adapt. You have to 'fire adapt' your community. That's what we try to do."
Research from Colorado State University backs Byrne up.
The university's interactive Wildfire Risk Viewer map allows users to look at various wildfire prevention and threat levels across the state.
Denver7 zoomed into Roxborough Park and looked at the rating for values at risk of burning, the burn probability and the fire intensity scale. These three maps are detailed below.
During Denver7's interview with Milburn, Santagata and Byrne, they also spoke about the dangers surrounding three so-called "chokepoints" in their area.
All of them explained that they have personally seen traffic congestion in those intersections and fear what that could look like in an evacuation scenario.
Denver7 mapped out those three areas of concern, which you can see below.
Milburn, Santagata and Byrne maintained that they are not against the growth of their community and the surrounding areas. They just want it done responsibly.
"We are just asking for safe infrastructure to be put before the rapid growth continues, because we know that this area is going to expand, and we're not against that, but we just want to make sure that we're safe in the process," Milburn said.
Denver7 reached out to Douglas County to bring the residents' concerns to the county leaders. They provided the following statement:
Douglas County takes wildfire mitigation and response seriously. Each year, the Board of Douglas County Commissioners invests $6.7 million in wildfire mitigation and response programs, including a dedicated wildland firefighting helicopter and helitack team. In Roxborough specifically, the County has implemented several dedicated evacuation routes, called Emergency Egress Easements, for use only during a wildfire evacuation. In addition, the County opened the Waterton Road extension – a 2.8-mile, two-lane roadway from Airport Road to Moore Road – in 2020 – a $13 million investment by the County.
Each month, Douglas County convenes its Wildfire Action Collaborative, a group of experts from more than 15 organizations dedicated to wildfire mitigation and response. Roxborough sends a representative each month to participate with those partners.
The three community members Denver7 interviewed all acknowledged they have had these conversations with Douglas County leaders before — now, they want more urgency attached to the subject.
"I've talked to the commissioners. They are very aware of this. They are working with us on this," Santagata said. "I do believe that our political leadership is behind us, but we're the ones living here, and so it's every day that we see the reality of it."
That is even more obvious on days when the temperatures rise, humidity falls and wind picks up, Santagata said. The reality of what could happen when those conditions combine, creating a high fire risk, frightens her.
"I don't sleep at night," she said. "I am constantly on the weather app, checking wind direction, and I'm also checking social media to see if anything is popping, because you just have to be ready all the time in the summer."
All three told Denver7 they hope Douglas County leadership does some sort of evacuation study to help give them, and others who live in the area, peace of mind.
In the meantime, they have created a Change.org petition to engage others in the community who may feel the same.
