Colorado Are You FireWise? Program: An Overview

The Colorado State Forest Service began the “Are You FireWise?” and “Are You Plain’s FireWise?” in 1999 to help educate landowners and homeowners about steps they can take to protect their home from wildfire. This information has been disseminated through a variety of ways including community workshops, seminars and one-on-one forester to homeowner dialouge. Defensible space, home access, water supply, trees and shrubs, evacuation and interior safety are some of the topics covered in a FireWise workshop. This program has also been a key to developing community wildfire protection plans (CWPP). There are currently over 150 CWPPs in Colorado. FireWise practices are important for all ages to understand. Using the Fire Works Trunks, a fire ecology curriculum out of the National Fire Lab in Missoula, Montana, the CSFS has adapted some of the hands-on experiments from the curriculum to create a fire ecology and defensible space program for any age. This program covers lodgepole and ponderosa pine ecosystems, the fire triangle, defensible space and a great experiment called Matchstick Forests