Heightened fire danger heading into summer has firefighters across Southwest Colorado concerned, including about whether water supplies will be sufficient to fight a blaze.
“Water supplies are going to be pretty challenged this year based on the lack of snowpack, snowmelt and drought conditions,” said Durango Fire Protection District Chief Randy Black.
According to the Colorado Division of Prevention and Control’s April 16 drought report, more than half the state is already in extreme or exceptional drought – categorized by large agricultural losses, reduced reservoir levels and heightened wildfire danger.
La Plata County ranged from severe to exceptional drought, the report said. That caused the city of Durango to issue stage 1 water restrictions April 10.
Like Black, Upper Pine River Fire Protection District Chief Bruce Evans is concerned. Evans said during the Palisades and Eaton fires – which erupted in Los Angeles County in January 2025, killed 28 people and destroyed over 16,000 homes – some fire hydrants being used to battle the blazes ran out of water.
“If you’re a student of the Palisades Fire, one of the things that was routinely reported was that the reservoirs were dry and they ran out of water pretty quickly,” he said.
Because many La Plata County residents live in the urban-wildland interface – where communities butt up and into forestland – the risk of a wildfire destroying large swaths of forests, houses, business and infrastructure is especially potent this year.
The best way to reduce that risk is to remove flammable vegetation from around a property and retrofitting houses and businesses with more fire-resistant materials when fire danger is low. The Colorado State Forest Service’s Home Ignition Zone Guidelines detail how best homeowners can mitigate their property.
The fewer structures at heightened risk of burning, the less concern there is about water use. Mitigation can also help homeowners maintain their insurance coverage and provide peace of mind.
“The more the homeowners can conserve that water for firefighting operations, then we’re not going to run the risk of opening a hydrant like they did at Los Angeles County Fire and Los Angeles City Fire and having the hydrant be dry,” Evans said.
For Andy Glanz – an industrial designer and former paramedic and EMT – and his wife and business partner, Stef Glanz, one approach to the problem are rooftop sprinklers. In 2025, the Durango couple started building wildfire sprinkler systems, which they plan to sell through the couple’s company Go Time Designs LLC.
Studies have shown that 90% of structures that burn in a wildfire do so because an ember blowing off the approaching blaze lands on the structure. Unlike their garden-variety cousins, the Glanzes’ sprinklers are meant to stop an ember from landing on and igniting a house.
“The whole goal is to keep embers out,” Stef Glanz said. “Sprinklers create a water and humidity barrier to keep those embers out.”
The sprinklers are linked via hoses to a small pump that is connected to a water supply, which is either a house’s sprinkler spigot, a cistern or a standalone water tank. The idea is to turn it on just before leaving the house in the event of an evacuation.
Evans sees potential in the use of the sprinklers, both for home defense and for conserving water. Where fire engines use hundreds of gallons of water per minute, sprinklers use a fraction of that. The Glanzes’ system, for example, typically put out 6 gallons per minute.
“The sprinklers use a couple gallons a minute, versus if we pull up in a fire truck the first two hand lines that come off are going to flow 125 to 150 gallons a minute,” Evans said.
Upper Pine fire has done demonstrations with home wildfire sprinklers, which, according to a YouTube video on the department’s channel, are effective at stopping embers when paired with fuel reduction and home hardening.
Additionally, Andy Glanz pointed to how similar systems are already used in Australia, which also has to deal with destructive wildfires.
According to a report from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia’s national science agency, home wildfire sprinkler systems can “aid in the survival of buildings (and people) during a bushfire” – what they call a wildfire in the Land Down Under.
But Black said the sprinkler systems are a “double-edged sword.”
“They can end up using the water that we need to be able to take care of a fire,” Black said. “They can be helpful, but it can also be a challenge. We find the most success is bringing our own water in to make sure that we’ve got enough water to fight the fire.”
These systems can be expensive. Go Time Design LLC’s can cost about $10,000, though the price can fluctuate based on size of the house and certain components – like the pump or number of sprinklers – included in the system, Stef Glanz said.
The Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety said wildfire sprinkler systems are promising but still an emerging, unproven technology.
IIBHS said standardized testing and installation regulations must be implemented. Additionally, active wildfire mitigation strategies, like sprinklers, “should never be used in lieu of passive mitigation strategies” like home hardening and fuel reduction.
But that was never the point of the sprinklers, Andy Glanz said.
“Of things that people should be doing to prepare, mitigation is first,” Glanz said.
Evans also said having another source of water on one’s property, like a human-made pond, kiddie pool or cistern, can be used by firefighters when responding to a wildfire.
Black said he has a wildfire sprinkler system set up on his home. But it is meant to be an extra line of defense, and that community-wide mitigation should come first.
Additionally, fire departments are adapting to the water scarcity in other ways. For instance, Evans said Upper Pine is adopting “skid units” – tanks and hoses with a 300-gallon capacity that mount to their pickup trucks.
Skid units essentially turn those small trucks into mini fire engines that can quickly respond to fires soon after they break out, and are more maneuverable than a larger engine in wildland settings. Evans said they can help fire departments cover more ground.
And, Black said, local governments, fire departments and federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management have been working to mitigate hundreds of acres of public lands throughout the winter.
They key is for home and business owners to mitigate their properties to fill in the gaps between government mitigation projects, Black said.
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
