LARKSPUR, Colo. — After spending 72 hours battling the Aspen Acres Fire, Larkspur Fire Chief Timothy McCawley is urging Douglas County residents to prepare for the possibility of a wildfire closer to home.
As the Aspen Acres fire sits at 35% containment, Denver7 Douglas County Reporter Tyler Melito sat down with McCawley Sunday after returning from the southern Colorado blaze.
"I've been in the fire service 26 years, and even for me, some of what I experienced while I was down there was tragic," McCawley told Melito.
McCawley added that while they made some progress, they were unable to save everything.
"We were in some cases doubling what we would normally do for safety areas to lock those fires in, making sure that it was doubly as wide in dozer lines, ensuring that the fire couldn't travel outside of those containment zones again," McCawley said. "Houses were lost. The fire was traveling in very fast conditions, very dry conditions. That was just going in directions we couldn't predict."
► Watch Tyler Melito's report in the video below:
The conditions McCawley said have been a product of the winter Colorado had, causing challenging times for firefighters statewide.
"Unfortunately, what we're seeing is some unusual, some different types of fire behaviors, some things that we're not used to," McCawley detailed.
Which is why McCawley and his team have been getting an important message out to everyone they protect.
"That fire could happen here in Douglas County," McCawley said.
McCawley said he and his team have been going around, doing as much fire mitigation as they can, and warning residents about the importance of being prepared.
"When we go out to the house, we'll look at vegetation around the house and how we can improve your ability to make sure that the house is going to survive through a wildfire incident,"
McCawley explained. "Are there trees that are touching it? Are there things that we can make recommendations on for you to do to make your house safer and ready to weather that storm?"
It's something Larkspur residents like Carrissa Ahlstrom, who's called the town home since 2009, says she greatly appreciates.
"It's really nice to see them being just preventing wildfires in the first place and just helping their community, even other people's community," Ahlstrom told Melito.
Ahlstrom has noticed the conditions around her home being worse this year than years past.
"It's really scary," Ahlstrom said. "Our whole mountain is actually full of dead trees because of the moths. We didn't get a lot of snow this last winter. We did get quite a lot of rain in the summer, which I was hoping would help, you know, offset that."
While she hopes it doesn't come to it, Ahlstrom said she and her family are prepared for anything.
"We actually put an emergency box together, and we have bags packed just in case we, if we ever get the call to like be on pre-evacuation or whatever, we have all of the important items that we can bring to a friend's house," Ahlstrom described.
McCawley also stressed the importance of residents knowing what to do and where to go if and when a fire occurs, and of signing up for the county's alert system, DougCo Alert.
"Practice how to get in and out of your neighborhoods so that, in smoky conditions or in a high-stress situation, it's just a muscle memory type thing that you're able to evacuate quickly and safely," McCawley said. "We're still seeing a pretty low rate of people transitioning from Code Red to the new Douglas County Alert, and so you can go to Douglas County's website and register for that, but that stuff didn't transfer from the old to the new system."
You can sign up for DougCo Alert here.
