Multiple agencies gather for Marble wildfire evacuation exercise planning

On Tuesday, March 31, the Gunnison County Emergency Management Team led a cross-jurisdictional planning meeting to discuss evacuation planning in the event of a wildfire in Marble, a small community in northern Gunnison County that lies along the Crystal River and can only be accessed by County Road 3 for ingress and egress.

Gunnison County Emergency Manager Lisa Bickford and Deputy Emergency Manager Ryan White organized the gathering, which was held at the nearby Carbondale Fire Station. Gunnison County Communications Director Patty Dowd Schmitz and Public Information Officer Nicole Stone as well as Gunnison County Sheriff's Deputy Scott Leon also participated in the meeting.

Marble lies in Gunnison County but is serviced by Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District (based out of Garfield County) for fire and EMS response, and also by Pitkin County Regional Emergency Dispatch Center for 911 dispatching. As such, numerous jurisdictions were invited to participate in the planning exercise, including the Town of Marble, Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office, Gunnison County Public Works, Carbondale & Rural Fire Protection District, Pitkin County Office of Emergency Management, Pitkin County Regional Emergency Dispatch, Gunnison Regional Communications Center, Roaring Fork Valley Wildfire Collaborative, White River National Forest, and more. 

Attendees at the meeting heard a presentation from Vanderbilt University's Dr. Hussam Mahmoud, who has been working on a predictive modeling process that helps understand the potential spread of fire in the Marble area given certain variables, including ignition location, wind speed, and more.

The Marble evacuation planning process was an outcome of a multi-day evacuation tabletop scenario that Emergency Management held in collaboration with the United States Fire Administration last April. The goal is to create a Marble Wildfire Evacuation Plan that relies on close cooperation among all agencies. The group discussed evacuation planning, traffic control, communications and emergency alerting, fire response, and other topics.

"This planning effort is so important because the Marble area has been identified as having high wildfire risk in the Community Wildfire Protection Plan," says Lisa Bickford. "The area faces unique challenges because it is very remote with a one-way in, one-way out structure as well as a lack of cell service. It is also serviced by a mix of Pitkin County, Garfield County and Gunnison County response agencies. This multi-jurisdictional working group is collaborating to reduce the risk to wildfire in the area by conducting wildfire and evacuation modeling that is influencing mitigation projects; creating a wildfire evacuation plan; and working toward a full-scale exercise to simulate a large-scale wildfire evacuation. We'd especially like to thank Gretchen Rank, the Wildfire Resilience Manager from the Colorado River Sustainability Campaign for her support and funding in driving these efforts."

At the end of the meeting, Town of Marble administrator and former Carbondale Fire Chief Ron Leach expressed gratitude on behalf of the community for the group's efforts in planning for the possibility of a significant wildfire in Marble. "We are very grateful to see this process happening," he said. "Our residents thank you."