Helpful Resources for Wildfire Preparedness

What you can do to be prepared.

Sign up for emergency alerts

Our counties’ Public Safety agencies have all enabled Everbridge, a text message emergency notification system that provides essential information quickly in a variety of situations, such as fires, severe weather, floods, unexpected road closures, or evacuation of buildings or neighborhoods. This is one of the best and fastest ways to stay informed of potentially dangerous events in your area.

Tip – after signing up, you can go back into your account and edit your subscriptions based on alert type and area.

Make sure we have the right contact info for you, too. You can add and edit your contact information in SmartHub or give us a call at 970.945.5491 and we’ll happily update it for you.

watch-duty-app
Watch Duty app
  • 501(c)(3) nonprofit
  • Alerts you of nearby wildfires and firefighting efforts 
  • Real-time wildfire maps
  • Clear & concise evacuation notices

Learn how to "Live Wildfire Ready"

Live Wildfire Ready is a statewide collaborative effort that shares simple, practical, low-cost actions residents can take to prepare their homes and property for wildfire. 

In addition to preparing one’s home, living wildfire-ready means being ready to evacuate during a fire. Inside, you’ll find great info on how to:

  • Explore wildfire risk in your community
  • Prepare your home and property for wildfire
  • Be ready to evacuate in case of wildfire

Homeowners in the Eagle River and Roaring Fork Valleys can sign up for free wildfire risk assessments to help protect their properties.

These programs provide:

  • Free wildfire risk property assessments
  • Specific ways to reduce wildfire threat

Sign up here:

Help us keep a 15+ foot clearance in the path of power lines

Fire in the path of a power line can keep entire communities without power for extended periods of time. We greatly appreciate our members’ help in keeping our right-of-ways clear of all vegetation and flammable debris (including stacks of firewood).

What we're doing to keep you safe.

Extensive year-round prevention work

Throughout the year, we invest heavily in proactive prevention, including:

  • Vegetation management and tree trimming in our power line right-of-ways
  • Drone inspections to view equipment and lines from angles not visible from the ground
  • Multispectral imagery to assess tree health, decay, and fallen vegetation
  • Infrared thermography to detect equipment “hot spots” invisible to the naked eye
  • System hardening, maintenance, and engineering work: including reducing expulsion fuses, replacing porcelain cutouts with polymer versions, covering jumpers, and installing fiberglass brackets

These efforts help reduce both outage frequency and wildfire risk and help us identify and correct system issues before they become failures.

'Wildfire Safety Settings' for days with high fire risk

Fire Safety Settings make the electric system more sensitive to potentially hazardous conditions, such as high winds or contact between power lines and vegetation or debris.

When fire weather conditions become significantly elevated (for example, during Red Flag Warnings in any part of our service territory), we may enable these settings to reduce the chance of ignition. 

If a fault occurs, power is interrupted more quickly than under normal operations, minimizing the risk of sparks or arcing that could start a wildfire.

Because Fire Safety Settings are more sensitive than standard system settings, members may notice changes in how the system behaves during high‑risk fire weather:

  • Momentary Power Blinks
    Brief interruptions may occur when the system quickly clears minor faults. Lights may blink but remain on.

  • Power Outages That Last Longer
    In times of more extreme risk, the system is designed not to automatically restore power after a fault. All lines must be visually inspected by our crews before restoring power to ensure the line is safe before restoring power.