Wildfire Related Hazards

Other hazards can contribute to the potential for wildfires or can influence wildfire behavior:

• High winds can down power lines (providing an ignition source), and/or result in areas of downed and dead trees (increasing fuel loads); high winds can also produce rapid rates of spread on active fires and increase the distance of ember transport beyond the active fire perimeter.
• Floods, landslides, and avalanches can result in areas of heavy fuel loading.
• Earthquakes can crack gas lines, creating a higher potential for ignition.
• Lightning can ignite fuels, resulting in wildland fires.
• Drought conditions increase wildfire potential by decreasing fuel moisture. Warm winters, hot and dry summers, severe drought, insect and disease infestations, years of fire suppression, and growth in the wildland-urban interface continue to increase wildfire risk and the potential for catastrophic wildfire in Colorado (Colorado Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan).
  Wildfires can also contribute to and influence the magnitude of other hazards. Severe wildfire events may leave slopes denuded and hydrophobic. In these cases a single heavy rain event can lead to higher volumes of runoff and correspondingly a higher risk for flash flooding, erosion and deposition, and mud/debris flows.

Wildfire events may also create open slopes through the consumption of mature timber. In some locations where this occurs, this can create new avalanche slide paths, or enlarge existing avalanche slide paths.

In these cases, a single heavy rain event can lead to higher volumes of runoff and correspondingly a higher risk for flash flooding, fluvial hazards such as erosion and deposition, and mud/debris flows.