Mitigation Efforts Community-Powered Wildfire Prep
FAPCo partners with organizations like Team Rubicon and CORE Electric Cooperative to bring hands-on wildfire mitigation directly to Park County properties — clearing fuel loads, hardening homes, and reducing wildfire risk zone by zone.
How mitigation works
Three zones, one goal: slow the fire down.
Park County mitigation standards break a property into three zones, each with a different job in stopping a wildfire before it reaches a home.
Stop Ember Ignition
Remove juniper shrubs, pine needles, wood mulch, and firewood. Clear debris from under decks and install noncombustible ground cover (rock/gravel) and 1/8″ metal vent screens.
Closest to the homeReduce Flame & Heat
Prune ponderosa and fir branches to 6–10 feet, heavily thin lodgepole stands, and mow grasses to 4 inches or less. Ensure at least 10 feet of spacing between tree crowns.
Reduces radiant heatInterrupt Fire Spread
Thin dense stands and beetle-killed trees, increase crown spacing to 15–30 feet, and manage Gambel oak patches by breaking them into smaller clumps.
Reduces crown-fire riskUpcoming
Mitigation work happening this season.
Team Rubicon Hasty Mitigation
Team Rubicon is bringing hands-on mitigation to 14 homes in north Park County belonging to elderly, disabled, and veteran homeowners.
- Early August — A “Hasty Mitigation” proof-of-concept: Zone 1 work around a small set of homes, testing whether short-term prep can help a home survive an ember storm.
- Late August — The team returns to complete comprehensive mitigation across all three zones at each of the 14 homes.
CORE Community Service Day
Sponsored by CORE Electric Cooperative, a member-owned, not-for-profit electric cooperative serving over 300,000 people along Colorado’s Front Range. Roughly 30 volunteers will complete Zone 1 work at homes identified and inspected by FAPCo, with FAPCo staff leading the teams on-site.
Funding fuel reduction
A new grant is funding fuel load reduction.
FAPCo recently received a $5,000 grant to fund additional fuel load reduction work, with a focus on chipping slash and running a pine needle and pine cone removal drive using community dumpsters. Details on how these funds will be deployed are still being finalized.
Program Partners: Team Rubicon · CORE Electric Cooperative · Park County Fire Districts