As the Marshall Fire roared into heavily populated areas of Boulder County, some residents report, the only way they knew things were getting dangerous was by watching people run out of nearby Target and Costco stores into hazy parking lots.

At ground zero on Dec. 30, where Boulder Sheriff’s Office says the fire originated, some residents said that even though they were signed up to get emergency evacuation alerts through Boulder’s Office of Disaster Management, communications to their phones were dead.

“I have gotten alerts when there was a flood, but not this time,” said Brigitte Tawa. She said when she went to T-Mobile the next day, she was told that twelve towers were down including two in her area. 

Mike Zoltowski was living in a friend’s home. The friend got a notification and he didn’t because his phone wasn’t registered through Boulder County’s service. “I saw the fire, so I got out of there,” he said. 

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Tawa also didn’t hear a siren go off even though she lives right across from Mountain View Fire Rescue Station.

“Believe me, we hear it when it goes off. The siren would have been useful. The way I found out about the fire was through my sister-in-law, who saw what she thought was a bonfire when she drove by the Twelve Tribes property at around 11 am.” 

Gaps in Boulder County’s evacuation alert system during Colorado’s most destructive wildfire have Boulder County disaster management officials in a tight spot as they assess what went wrong. Sirens in Louisville and Superior did not go off during the Marshall fire because they were not programmed for a wildfire emergency, according to an official with Boulder’s Office of Disaster Management.

In addition, Boulder County had not fully implemented its national alert system, called the Weather Emergency Alert (WEA), in time for the crisis. Boulder Disaster Management Director Mike Chard said the office started to engage the WEA process in August 2019, but the plan was tabled for a more pressing obligation: the coronavirus pandemic.

In March, the King Soopers mass shooting took top priority, followed by a cyberattack which again pushed WEA plans aside a month later. The Feb. 2021 Calwood fire gobbled up the county’s attention.

“The plans for WEA were pending and we were moving along, and then the Marshall fire hits. I wish we would have had WEA implemented,’ said Chard, who expects for the WEA to be in place by April of this year.

Many counties use the WEA in tandem with a cellphone notification system called Everbridge, which Boulder County does use and pay for, but residents must opt-in for it to work. Chard told a Zoom of 1100 fire-affected residents that the ODM is working on getting the word out more effectively so that residents know it’s available.

“For those who are in it, we have been doing preparedness work throughout the year trying to get people into it,” said Chard. “Obviously people weren’t, so there are definitely some gaps around that preparedness element. So, we will look at that and see how we can better market the system and get more people into it moving forward.” 

SILENT SIRENS

As for the silent sirens, Chard told The Denver Gazette that after assessing the situation, Boulder County determined that the Louisville and Superior’s siren system can only be programmed for six specific alerts and wildfires are not one of them.

The six programmed notifications are:  tornado, flash flooding, system test, system cancellation, hazardous materials and severe weather warning.

“The sirens are audible with the traditional siren sound and also have a voice warning. For example, in a flash flood a siren tone will sound then followed by a voice message that says climb to higher ground. The sirens do not have a wildfire warning as part of their programming,” Chard wrote in an email. 

Chard said that the reason the hazardous materials alert is included as one of the six warnings instead of wildfires is due to toxic waste spills which can happen on Highway 36 and on the railroads near Louisville.

“People were not thinking that a wildfire like that would hit like this,” explained Chard, who says he’s going to sit down with the Boulder County Sheriffs to reassess the six programming priorities to possibly include a warning for wildfires.

According to Boulder County records, the first mandatory evacuation notice was sent at 11:47 a.m. to 215 residents who live near the fire’s starting point, in the area of Colorado Highway 93 and Marshall Road. The next mandatory evacuation alert pinged just south and east of where the fire began a little under half an hour later, at 12:15 p.m. By 12:49 p.m., the notification went out to southern Superior, south of Discovery.

The last mandatory evacuation notice was sent at 2:58 p.m. for Cherryvale and South Boulder.

In all, according to the Boulder Office of Disaster Management chart, 24,349 people were told that they had to evacuate due to the oncoming wildfires. Most of those notices told people to evacuate immediately, but two, including the notice to Southern Superior, advised residents to prepare to evacuate or to leave if they felt unsafe.

Robert Sharpe, 69, died in the fire, and another person is missing and presumed dead, authorities have said.

Neighboring counties have been there, done that

As director of emergency management for Larimer County, Lori Hodges is responsible for creating and updating plans for emergency notifications there and worked on the 2020 Cameron Peak Fire. She said these opt-in systems are crucial: “People have to be engaged in that. We definitely want to get a hold of everybody, but the community has to be involved.” 

Hodges said that the Cameron Peak fire came in waves, but the Marshall fire was a raging monster which ate up everything in its path in a short amount of time.

“It is critical to have a system in place to effectively evacuate community members, but the fire in Boulder was so fast, and with the winds at 100 mph, I honestly don’t know if notifications can go out in time with a fire like that. People in the community have to remain vigilant and informed to take action.”

Ben Bills, a spokesman for the El Paso-Teller County 911 Authority, knows firsthand the complexities of how a county handles notifications. He was in charge when both the June 2012 Waldo Canyon and June 2013 Black Forest fires broke out in El Paso County.

“Every fire is different,” Bills told The Denver Gazette. “During Waldo Canyon, we sent 100,000 notifications. At the time, we thought we were doing our best. But when you start looking at reports and infrastructure, we realized there were lessons to be learned.”

Bills said that between the two fires, the county decided to use a private notification system run by Everbridge. But because the fires happened so close together, they didn’t have time to make it fully functional.

“We were questioned about calls that may not have made it, and essentially it made us take a look at the system we were using at the time and evaluate if there was something better, faster, more robust out there.”

Today, Everbridge is El Paso County’s official notification system, which officials have just beefed up, Bills said. Boulder and Larimer counties also use Everbridge.

According to its website, Boulder County wants to improve its efforts working with both the WEA and Everbridge systems: “The Boulder Office of Disaster Management and the Boulder County Communications Center are working to have the implementation for both systems working in harmony together during 2022, and will continue to evaluate emerging technology.”

Boulder authorities want to improve the system so that they send the alert to people who live in mountainous terrain and in the plains in more densely-populated areas. 

Bills said disaster notifications change as new systems emerge and the challenge is to keep up with the latest and greatest tools.

“It’s a best faith effort,” he said. “For example, not everyone has the newest and greatest iPhone. Some people still have land phones. We also have to remember that the deaf and hard of hearing have their own technologies. There are a lot of moving parts to these notifications.”

Bottom line, Bills said people need to be prepared. “They need to come up with a communication plan now to get alerts from the emergency authorities.” 

Bills and Hodge said it’s too early for neighboring counties to second-guess Boulder County’s decision-making and that these fast-moving wildfires that now burn in the middle of winter keep them up at night.

Chard is working day and night to right the wrongs of the Marshall Fire evacuation system and says they aren’t hiding anything. “We are trying to get the facts out. It worked for the people who got it. For those who didn’t, it feels like a total failure,” Chard told The Denver Gazette.

“But people helped their neighbors, law enforcement and firefighters were aggressive and moved a lot of people away from hazards. In that, we’re fortunate.”