As wildfires continue to rage in Colorado, fire crews say they have all the water they need even during a challenging water year.
A poor snowpack and warm, dry days have exacerbated drought conditions and reduced reservoir storage to about 65% of the norm. Those conditions have primed landscapes to burn, but fire response teams say that access to water ranks among the least of their concerns.
“There are places where what we call ephemeral streams may not be running. Certainly water flow in water sources is pretty starkly diminished this year because of the drought,” Steve Lipsher, spokesperson for crews fighting the Aspen Acres fire, said. “That said, that has not been a limitation in our ability to get water or to use water.”
The Aspen Acres fire has destroyed more than 850 structures, including homes, sheds, barns and more, in southern Colorado. The human-caused blaze grew quickly during high winds and had expanded to over 99,500 acres as of Thursday morning. It was 36% contained.
Fire crews are still working to contain three other major fires in Colorado this week. As of Thursday, the Gold Mountain fire was 11% contained and had burned over 37,700 acres northeast of Ouray. Officials are still investigating its cause. The Ferris fire in southwestern Colorado, caused by lighting, had burned over 64,800 acres and was 53% contained. The human-caused Willow fire, near Leadville, burned over 6,800 acres and was 37% contained, according to InciWeb, an interagency incident information management system.
These fires are moving across landscapes that were already struggling with dry conditions. A March heat wave melted most of Colorado’s snowpack, effectively ending the snow accumulation season a month early. By mid-July, plants and landscapes are often as dry as they would normally be in mid-August and about 90% of the state continues to report drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
With less snowmelt, reservoir managers struggled to refill the state’s water storage banks. Blue Mesa Reservoir, the largest in the state, is at historic lows. Twin Buttes Reservoir in southeastern Colorado dried up completely. Announcements about reservoir closures and limitations on fishing, boating and recreation have been coming out regularly.
Fire teams said one or two people raised concerns about their water being used to fight the wildfires, but that’s no different from a normal year. If a small pond wasn’t available, crews easily found other options. Trips to get water might take longer, but that has just as much to do with terrain and equipment availability as water supplies.
Are the crews running into any issues finding water because of drought? The answer was simple.
“They are not,” Willow fire spokesperson Richard Reuse said.
That’s in part because wildfires require relatively little water. On Tuesday, helicopters scooped and delivered about 28,000 gallons of water to help fight the Willow fire, Reuse said. The air support for the fire has primarily been withdrawing water from Turquoise Lake, which stored 92,155 acre-feet Wednesday, or over 30 billion gallons of water.
One acre-foot equals the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of cropland in a foot of water or to provide two to four households with water for a year. The entire state of Colorado uses about 5.34 million acre-feet of water on average each year, according to the Colorado Water Conservation Board, one of the state’s top water agencies.
Here’s how fire crews find water to fight wildfires, even in a drought year.
Step 1: Talk to the locals
When California Interagency Incident Management Team 7 took over fire operations for the Ferris fire in southwestern Colorado from the local response team, they inherited tons of resources — including vital maps showing water sources, like agricultural or cattle ponds, hydrants and local reservoirs.
“That homework was already set up for us,” Nick Cleary, operations section chief, said.
Any forest managers, fire department or county government is going to have maps and pre-attack plans that have already identified water sources, he said.
If the fire expands — as the Ferris fire did — the teams find access to more water. Liaison officers talk to landowners, water commissioners, tribal representatives and other local officials to get consent before tapping water sources, often using simple, preprinted, standardized land use agreements.
“They’re the conduit to get any concerns, voice those concerns to the whole operations team from IC (incident command) to operations, and then make sure that we’re addressing those concerns,” Cleary said.
In an emergency — such as people or structures in imminent danger — the fire teams start using the water source without asking. Afterward, they ask the landowner for a land use agreement, he said.
Lipsher described the same process for the Aspen Acres fire near Pueblo: It is a well-established part of the national incident command system, he said.
“It’s almost always strictly a paperwork matter,” he said. “It’s almost never controversial or adversarial.”
Step 2: Call in pilots, pumps and pools
Firefighters have an array of tools for fighting fires — digging fire lines, clearing brush, dropping fire retardant and even carrying portable pumps.
They’re crafty, Cleary said, like the resourceful television character MacGyver.
“Firefighters are smart, and so it doesn’t matter if there’s water close by or there’s good hydrants,” he said.
Crews might find a stream nearby, dam it and pump water out of it using portable pumps. Trucks, called water tenders, also carry water directly to crews or leave it at drop points. Most of the tenders hold anywhere from 1,000 to 4,000 gallons.
“I haven’t heard any concerns about water, just distances, and that’s just based on the land and topography,” Cleary said. “I’m on the north side of the fire within the forest. There’s just no water sources, so we set them up and create our own.”
At drop points, fire crews use the water from the trucks to fill small, portable reservoirs — basically like mini-swimming pools that are normally about 4-feet tall and 15-feet long. They’re constructed using a metal frame and a suspended rubberized nylon sheet, Lipsher said.
“A pretty common thing for them to do is just taking advantage of the natural water,” Lipsher said.
Airtankers are called from fire to fire to carry water. The highest capacity plane, very large air tankers known as VLATs, mostly carry fire retardant or sometimes water. The DC-10, a type of VLAT, can deliver up to 9,400 gallons at a time, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. (That’s about 2.8% of an acre-foot.)
Large airtankers carry between 2,000 and 4,000 gallons of fire retardant or water. Single engine airtankers, the smallest type, can deliver up to 800 gallons of fire retardant or water.
Water scoopers, like the Super Scoopers responding to some fires in Colorado, are amphibious aircraft that skim the surface of water and scoop it into an onboard tank. Some water scoopers can hold up to 1,600 gallons of water. It can take as little as 12 seconds to fill the tank to capacity, and the aircraft can scoop from lakes that are about 6.5-feet deep and 300-feet wide.
Airtankers assigned to the Ferris fire in southwestern Colorado have mostly drawn from McPhee Reservoir, Cleary said. That reservoir held about over 57 billion gallons of water Wednesday, less than half of its total capacity.
The Super Scoopers fighting the Aspen Acres fire mostly draw from Pueblo Reservoir, Lipsher said. The reservoir held over 58 billion gallons Wednesday, just over half its capacity.
“That’s some pretty cool, pretty skilled flying to be able to belly land on water while still maintaining speed and then take off again with a full belly of water,” he said.
Helicopters carry water to wildfires and also help with other tasks, like firefighter and cargo transport, fire reconnaissance, aerial ignition, and search and rescue, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Type 1 helicopters are the largest, fastest flying and the most expensive helicopters used on wildland fires. They can typically carry 700 gallons of water or retardant via a bucket or a snorkel that fills an internal tank. Other types of helicopters deliver up to 300 gallons of water per bucket or 180 gallons per bucket.
For the Aspen Acres fire, firefighters have used water tenders, airtankers and helicopters to drop water and flame retardant on the fire, Lipsher said.
On July 11, one of the busiest days in the airfight, helicopter pilots delivered 212,316 gallons of water and 26,717 gallons of retardant on the fire in 315 drops, according to the fire’s air operations division.
That’s less than the amount of water evaporating off the reservoir, according to the Colorado Division of Water Resources. Evaporation from Pueblo Reservoir totaled about 301 million gallons from June 29, when the fire started, to Friday.
“In part because wildfires use relatively little water, it (drought) has not had a direct impact on what we’re trying to do,” Lipsher said. “We haven’t had to go without water or use less water. We’re able to use what we’ve needed.”
Step 3: Account for it later
In Colorado, every drop of water is accounted for.
If a beaver dams a creek, farmers and ranchers downstream will know about it. This year, water supplies are strained because of drought and many water users, mostly agricultural producers, are raising crops and cattle and running businesses with a fraction of their normal water supply.
In some cases, the firefighting land use agreement includes reimbursing the landowner for the water used or sometimes the landowner wants physical water back, Cleary said. They also use these agreements to secure space to park fire engines and create a basecamp, and even that can involve payment from the federal government to the landowner.
If the fire team needs to refill a pond, they will normally pull that water from another source, like McPhee Reservoir, he said. That involves working with local communities and water districts to track the amount of water being used and returned.
“If we’re taking water from their hydrant to refill somebody else,” Cleary said, “they’ll probably want to have it metered so they can track that.”