At a May 19 joint work session, members of the Pagosa Springs Town Council and Archuleta County Board of Archuleta County Commissioners (BoCC) heard an update on the fire hazard outlook for the 2025 summer season from Archuleta County Sheriff Mike Le Roux and Emergency Operations Director Roy Vega.
Le Roux explained the complex web of different fire response jurisdictions within the area, including Pagosa Fire Protection District, U.S. Forest Service, Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Los Pinos and Upper Pine fire districts and Archuleta County.
“In addition to that, we have the Division of Fire Prevention and Control, which is a state agency, and that’s the authority who, ultimately, the sheriff’s office … will go to to leverage external resources — airplanes, boots on the ground and funding,” Le Roux said.
While each fire protection agency has its own jurisdiction within the county, there is a “multiyear operating” agreement among the various agencies that states, “you shall respond with mutual aid toward your partner anywhere in Archuleta County,” he said.
He added, “It doesn’t matter if we ask the Upper Pine to respond to our fire, they have to do that and, vice versa, we will go across there” to help them.
Vega added, “We work very closely with the Forest Service,” reassuring the audience that the local offices “are fully staffed this year with firefighters.”
“None of the primary fire positions were let go or undone,” he said, and “they will have the ability to bring in outside resources to the area.”
He added that the county has hired “two new firefighters who will hopefully be coming on to the job by next week.”
To a question about protocol for the county’s fire response, Vega explained that “if it’s a fire within the incorporated areas, that’s gonna be the Pagosa Fire [Protection] District. If it’s within their district, that’s gonna be their fire, and they will then order additional resources … potentially leaning on us.”
He added, “If it’s in unincorporated areas, still on private [property], then that’s gonna be the sheriff’s office’s fire. We will then … have the ability to lean” on other agencies for resources, depending on the severity and conditions of the fire.
Le Roux added that in recent federal fires, which burned on Forest Service lands, such as the Chris Mountain, Bear Creek and Quartz Ridge fires, “the critical incident management team comes to the county, and usually hang out at Cloman Park, and they set up tent city, and they manage the federal incident.”
Vega also showed a handout with a chart indicating what the danger level was in the area during three recent major fires — the West Fork fires (2013), 416 Fire (2018) and Ice Fire (2020).
All of those fires occurred during either very high or severe fire danger periods, and while the danger was marked as low on the day of the work session, the handout predicts that the area will see moderate fire danger by May 25.
Vega said, “We are still forecasted to be well underneath” those memorable fires, but “the further out you try to predict, the less accurate it is, so that’s where we are now.”
He noted that he was seeing some weather predictions forecasting an active monsoon season, which would lessen the threat level if it materializes according to those forecasts.
Le Roux said explained he is working on making sure that shelter agreements are up to date in case of a major evacuation order.
He mentioned a shelter agreement between the town and the Red Cross and that the “school district has one as well with the Red Cross.”
“We would designate either one of those two locations as a mass sheltering location and then we would get accommodations set up there through our human services,” he said.
He indicated they are working on an uptown location for an emergency shelter as well.
“The best possible scenario would be for anyone who can to leave the county if they had the means … and to head to wherever you can get away from it,” saying that the average is about 10 percent of a population that tends to need public shelter during an emergency.
Council member Leonard Martinez noted that he is concerned that there is no permanent “emergency shelter in Archuleta County.”
He suggested that is a “topic of mutual interest” between the town and county, and thought such a shelter could be used for everyday individual emergencies, such as residents facing eviction, homelessness, domestic abuse and other personal emergencies.
Mayor Shari Pierce noted that this topic would require more information gathering before it could be brought back before the two entities.
On the Fourth of July fireworks celebration, Le Roux said, “I am not sure where we’re at with that,” but that most of the fire danger from fireworks tends not to come from the town-run display, but from individuals who “get excited” by the town doing a display, so they light their own fireworks.
“I don’t know if we’ll get a fire ban, stage 1 or stage 2, by the Fourth of July, because right now we’re OK,” he said.
Town Manager David Harris added that if the fireworks display is postponed, the “backup plan” would be to have the celebration at the Halloween Hootenanny.
Tourism Director Jennifer Green added that Visit Pagosa would be running an educational ad campaign on how to properly maintain and extinguish campfires, mainly for visitors who will be flocking to the outdoors this summer season.
Later, during an update on fire hydrant safely checks, Bill Hudson, from the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation (PAWSD) Board of Directors, said that “nearly half” of the more than 1,000 fire hydrants have been tested so far by PAWSD.
derek@pagosasun.com
