Grand Junction, Colo. — With river flows running at half normal levels and mountain snowpack barely reaching 40 percent of average in some areas, fire officials in the Grand Valley say this could be one of the most dangerous wildfire seasons in years. Crews are already deploying across state lines, clearing brush around homes, and begging residents to do their part before the first lightning strike hits.
The early warning signs are impossible to ignore.
“Usually we get a decent snowpack that keeps things wet into June,” says Stephen Bowers, chief meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction. “This year the melt happened weeks early and almost nothing is left above 10,000 feet in the southern mountains.”
That lack of moisture, combined with weeks of warm, windy weather, has pushed much of western Colorado into severe drought. The U.S. Drought Monitor currently rates 87 percent of Mesa County as D2 or worse — the same category that preceded the devastating 2020 Pine Gulch and East Troublesome fires.
Crews Already Fighting Fires Out of State
The Grand Junction Fire Department didn’t wait for trouble at home.
On March 16, GJFD sent a three-person team to South Dakota to battle the 8,434-acre Qury Fire, which was only 27 percent contained at the time. It’s part of a national rotation that regularly sends local firefighters to hotspots across the country.
“We tell the national center what we have available, and they send us where the need is greatest,” says Dirk Clingman, community outreach specialist for GJFD. “Those reps come home with experience you simply can’t get fighting grass fires on the valley floor.”
Every GJFD engine company now carries full wildland gear alongside structural turnout gear. New recruits earn their Red Card certification — the ticket required to fight federal wildfires — before they even finish the academy.
Turning Neighborhoods into Defensible Space
Two miles from downtown Grand Junction, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office Wildland Team runs a different kind of operation.
Engine Captain Luke Williams and his crew spend their days chewing through gamble oak and juniper with a 20-ton masticator, creating fuel breaks around homes in Glade Park and the Redlands.
“We just finished 27 properties in Glade Park,” Williams says. “Homeowners see that machine eat a 12-inch tree in ten seconds and suddenly they’re a lot more willing to thin the rest of their land.”
The team works free of charge for residents who qualify, but the real goal is changing minds.
“We can’t prevent fire,” Williams tells every landowner he meets. “We can only make sure your house is the one still standing when it’s over.”
His crew’s simple checklist has become the gold standard across the county:
- Clear pine needles and leaves from roofs and gutters
- Move firewood stacks at least 30 feet from the house
- Trim tree branches within 10 feet of chimneys
- Create a 5-foot non-combustible zone around the foundation (gravel, not bark mulch)
New Building Code Targets the Riskiest Areas
Starting April 1, every new home built in Mesa County’s Wildland-Urban Interface must follow Colorado’s new Wildfire Resiliency Code.
That means metal roofs, fire-resistant siding, enclosed eaves, and tempered glass windows in hundreds of neighborhoods from Powderhorn to Palisade.
Mesa County commissioners also shifted $100,000 in federal PILT money to local fire districts this spring — money that will buy new brush trucks, chain saws, and hose lays that can reach remote ridge tops.
This One Belongs to All of Us
Walk through any Grand Valley neighborhood right now and you’ll see the divide: one house surrounded by waist-high grass and junipers touching the siding, the next with clean gutters and a freshly mowed 100-foot buffer.
The difference between those two homes this summer could literally be night and day.
“Collaboration is the only way this works,” Captain Williams says. “Fire doesn’t care about property lines or jurisdictions. Neither should we.”
As red-flag warnings start popping up in March instead of July, the message from every fire chief is the same: the professionals are ready, but they can’t save your house if you wait until flames are at the door.
Get the pine needles off the roof. Move the propane tank. Cut the grass.
Because this year, the season has already started.
