Months ago, firefighters from all around the country packed into Gunnison High School to coordinate a response to the growing Lowline Fire just 14 miles from town. Now, in the same classrooms that were used to figure out how to contain the wildfire, high school students are brainstorming their own fire safety solutions.
With the Lowline Fire fresh on many locals’ minds, an environmental science class at GHS is working on a wildfire resilience project. They have gamed out ideal wildfire recovery options, discussed how to protect Gunnison’s most vulnerable populations and visited parcels on 7th Street in west Gunnison to assess defensible space.
All this work was an effort to decide, as a class, what community project they could pitch for a $1,200 grant. The class ultimately decided to raffle off wildfire preparedness items like fire blankets, emergency ladders and water filtration kits at a community wildfire expo at the Fred Field Center in mid-December. These items will be free to the public.
The free curriculum and grant come from the Hazard Education, Awareness and Resilience Task (HEART) Force, which works with rural Colorado middle and high school students and teachers to learn about natural hazards. The program is just five years old and is funded through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“[It] includes students in the conversation and gives them the power to say, ‘Hey, we need your help, and it's real.’ It's not a contrived situation. Emergency managers need [their] help in communicating to all parts of our community,” said Katya Schloesser. Schloesser works with teachers to administer the HEART Force program.
GHS environmental science teacher Krystal Brown has been using the HEART Force curriculum for years. Initially, it was a three-week unit in the Earth and space science class studying natural disasters. But this summer, a cohort of teachers from Colorado's rural school districts gathered in Gunnison to imagine what a longer, more intensive class could look like.
For Brown, a volunteer firefighter since 2013 and former employee of the Bureau of Land Management, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and the U.S Forest Service, the new, longer unit is giving her students a chance to study and plan real-time solutions.
“It’s all the pieces, and it's been really fun to bring all those entities together in one place,” she said.
At the end of November, students met with 10 professionals from the community with wildfire expertise. Some of those experts included Fire Marshal Hugo Ferchau, Upper Gunnison River Water Conservancy District’s Water Resource Specialist Cheryl Cwelich and Gunnison County’s Emergency Manager Scott Morrill.
Schloesser, also the education and outreach associate at the University of Colorado Boulder Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, has already worked with over 100 teachers around the state. The curriculum is developed in partnership with local agencies, like the county’s Emergency Services Department. This way, students use local data in their wildfire scenarios to assess real-time risk in their neighborhoods.
As the HEART Force program has grown, so has its offerings. Curriculums now are “trauma-informed” for students who may already carry an emotional burden from a former natural disaster. There is also an increased focus on social vulnerability and identifying Spanish-speaking communities in the Gunnison Valley that need more translation support.
For example, the City of Gunnison’s Community Liaison Ricardo Esqueda and Yazmin Molina of Gunnison County Health and Human Services shared their advice on increasing resilience work with the Spanish-speaking community. Meeting with Esqueda and Molina helped student Dayna Castro learn how she can help her own family.
“I've learned so much so far. They told us how they were able to communicate to people who don't even speak English. That helped one of my own family members,” Castro said.
“I feel like Hispanic people don't know as much about [wildfire] because they're not used to it,” said student Karina Morales. “And it's something new here. In Mexico, it appears in a different way and in different places.”
Morales’ native language is Cora, and she said her friends and family need extra translation help. With the help of two friends, she’s thinking about ways the county could help her neighbors understand and prepare more effectively.
“What's amazing about a small community like ours is the students in Krystal's class come from all parts of our community and have a voice within their own neighborhoods,” Schloesser said. “They have so much power as youth with these really tough problems like wildfires and climate change. When young people speak, I think people are much more willing to listen.”
Schloesser believes the project-based curriculum can also reduce climate anxiety in young people. She was helping a teacher in Granby, Colorado when the East Troublesome Fire started, one of the most destructive fires in Colorado history. Students returned to school weeks later when it was safe and talked about how they could have been better prepared next time. The teacher later shared that her nightmares about the fire subsided because of the project.
“It was powerful, and changed her perspective and her students’ perspective on their own agency in addressing the problem,” Schloesser said.
The community wildfire expo will be held on Thursday, Dec. 14 at the Fred Field Center from 5-8 p.m.
(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or abby@gunnisontimes.com.)
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