On a Tuesday afternoon in June, 2024, a plume of smoke started to rise about ten miles south of HMI’s campus. Word spread rapidly between HMI employees and residents: a wildfire had sprung up by Twin Lakes. We would come to learn that an abandoned campfire had sparked the blaze, which ultimately burned more than 700 acres of National Forest land and took firefighters two weeks to extinguish.
It’s no secret that wildfires have increased in their frequency and ferocity across the American West. In Colorado, all 20 of the 20 largest wildfires in recorded history have occurred since 2001, the three largest taking place in 2020. While Leadville and the high Rockies have a low risk of wildfire during the roughly seven snow-covered months of the year, our region becomes extremely vulnerable to human and nature-initiated fires during the summer.
Insurance companies have taken notice, and HMI has endured head-spinning property insurance increases in recent years with no reprieve in sight. Since 2019, HMI’s premiums have increased eightfold, rising from $26,000 to $226,000 just four years later. Property insurance has become so costly that the HMI Board of Trustees made the decision last year to partially self-insure against the risk of a catastrophic loss, a strategy adopted by many western schools unable to afford (or in some cases, even obtain) insurance. The effects of the recent Los Angeles wildfires, the costliest in history, on future premiums are not yet known.
In addition to the economic implications, wildfire risk has become the central lens through which we maintain and improve our 80-acre campus, about half of which is lodgepole pine woodland. “Wildfire risk and mitigation has been a concern at HMI for years,” says Justin Talbot, Director of Wilderness Programs and Risk Management, “but while we used to prioritize forest health over mitigation, we are now forced to take the opposite approach. We are no longer planting new trees and have begun thinning our tree-cover, creating more defensible space around buildings, and taking other steps to reduce fire risk.” The Forest Service, too, has begun aggressively thinning the forest land around HMI. Hundreds of acres around Turquoise Lake have been clear cut or thinned since 2018, leaving conspicuous gaps in the forest but removing fuels for future conflagrations.
We are proud of the steps we are taking towards wildfire preparedness, but aware that it is just that: preparedness, not prevention. The combination of increasing temperatures and drought due to climate change, underfunded federal oversight agencies, and increased recreation in the Rocky Mountains ensure that HMI will need to center wildfires in its planning for the foreseeable future.
HMI's Wildfire Mitigation Efforts:
In the past five years HMI has:
- Removed nearly all trees within 30 feet of buildings
- Thinned out the woodland portion of campus by roughly 20%
- Replaced the wooden sidings on cabins with fire retardant materials
- Constructed cisterns to store 50,000 gallons of water throughout our campus for emergency use
- Improved emergency vehicle access to our campus by constructing new roads and access points
- Moved all cabin firewood away from the sides of cabins during summer time
This article originally appeared in the Spring 2025 HMI Newsletter.