The American West needs a new kind of firefighter that fights fires that aren't only wild or urban, but burn in the space between.
This was the main finding from a group of researchers who studied the 2012 Waldo Canyon fire, Colorado's second most destructive wildfire and one that has come to epitomize the transformation of wildfires into massive urban disasters. The National Institute of Standards and Technology's report on the fire, released Monday after two and half years of study, is a painstaking account of the efforts to save hundreds of homes during a firestorm on June 26, 2012. While crews were enormously successful - and saved 75 percent of the homes that were burning - the report found that the country's firefighters must be retrained to handle fires like Waldo, said Alex Maranghides, a lead researcher on the study.
"It's a new approach to firefighting, it's not a question of adapting," said Maranghides on Monday, just after he addressed a White House summit on climate change and wildfires.
Firefighters and experts have talked about the ember storm that destroyed Mountain Shadows - a rain of billions of fiery particles that flew miles to slip into vents and land on wooden decks. Like many neighborhoods destroyed by so-called wildland urban interface fires, the homes in Mountain Shadows burned each other down, while the actual wildfire reached only the western edges of the neighborhood.