Transcript for the Planning Fire Management Prescribed Burns video.


I'm Seth McKinney, I'm the fire management officer for the Boulder County Sheriff's Office.
And I'm Dustin Blair and I'm the assistant fire management officer.
This time of year we're actually doing quite a bit of prescribed fire. Typically we're using prescribed fire to lower the
amount of fuels down in our natural environment.
So when we're looking at planning, we're looking at all sorts of factors - our staffing and what our logistical needs are in order to carry out the burn safely as well as the environmental factors like what the weather is and the extended and short-term weather forecasts even up to the last minute we look at environmental conditions and what's going on locally, and how we're going to impact that with our operation.
It's not uncommon for us to do a whole lot of planning get out to a burn and get ready and have to stop and turn around.
With prescribed fire being pre-planned we have that ability to stop. 
So with our prescribed fire planning process months in advance our land managers with open space are looking at what properties to burn and what kind of benefits they're looking for out of our burning.
We're also working with with our state partners who oversee public health and smoke management.
We want to make sure we're burning in the right conditions in the right smoke dispersal conditions so that when we light our piles the smoke is going to clear the area and not linger.
Once we make the decision to go forward with the project we'll get out to the field make sure the conditions are right from what we're seeing on the forecast and go from there.
If things are looking good we'll continue and do a test fire. So we do our tests in small isolated areas where we decide that we need to
stop we we can put it out. Basically we want that test fire to be representative of the rest of the burn going forward.
In fire management we're always using prescribed fire with certain objectives in mind. A lot of times that's fuel reduction out in our wildland environment.
Safety is always paramount for us.
Part of our process for implementing prescribed fire is also writing a burn plan. That burn plan will give us the parameters in which we can carry out the burn safely while meeting objectives throughout the entirety of our burn. We follow that burn plan to a T.
For fire management our number one job is making sure that we're burning in the right conditions so that we can maintain control of our prescribed fire.
If the conditions aren't right we're not going to burn.
There's a few different types of prescribed fire. 
The most that you'll see around here is agriculture burns and pile burns.
The pile burns are piles of slash that are built up on purpose to burn under given conditions, typically snow.
The agriculture burns are ones you're going to see mostly in the flats burned for water conveyance and growth of crops.
Prescribed fire is used as a tool because it's good for the environment. We're actually recycling the nutrients from dead material and putting it back in the soils. Additionally it's been proven to be one of the cheapest land management tools there is out there.
Just like when we're fighting uncontrolled wildfires sometimes we'll use fire as a tool to suppress fires. However in a prescribed fire event we're using that same fire to mitigate future fires. So depending on the type of burn that we're engaged on whether it's pile
burning activities or agricultural burning activities we have an assortment of equipment that we'll use on burns.
A lot of the times when we're doing pile burning activities we're doing that in the snow in as which we're making sure that we've got enough snow on the ground to contain the piles. We're also looking at our short-term and long-term forecast to make sure that snow will will stay around.
For agricultural burning we'll implement some of our larger tools being our fire engines. A lot of times when you see us doing our burning we've got a fire engine on standby close by. In addition of the fire engines we've also got our personnel and UTVs sometimes equipped with additional water tanks.
We also notify our local fire districts and departments that we're burning within and they usually have equipment on standby if necessary. 
In addition to doing prescribed fire to meet land management objectives we're also using it as a training tool. A lot of times
we're doing pile burns or agricultural burns in fields and recreating it as a suppression fire for us to have training with either with our folks or the local fire districts to provide additional training for the volunteer forces.
The Boulder County Sheriff's Office fire management isn't the only a agency doing prescribed fire. In Boulder County the US Forest Service and the National Park Service at Rocky Mount National Park also conduct their own prescribed fire activities. For more information visit their website.
Additionally agriculture burning is usually done by the private land owner themselves. These folks typically have a lot of experience burning on their own land and go through our open burn permit system in order to register their burns so we know who's doing what.
In the county the open burn permitting system allows residents to apply for slash pile burning and also residents who are doing agricultural burning to register their burns. This stops us from sending apparatus to their home unnecessarily and stops our dispatch center from getting overloaded with unnecessary calls.
The idea being that the open burn portal has an archive of all burning going on in Boulder County live, in real time.
You can visit the open burn site at BoulderCounty.gov.
Burn permits typically in the winter you're going to see slash pile burns in the foothills and mountains. 
More in the spring you'll see the agriculture burns down low once the grass is dry.
Boulder County Sheriff's fire management works really hard to make sure we're coordinating correctly with all of our partners both at the federal agency the local fire districts and our residents using the the open burn permitting system.
When smoke in the county will be widely visible our communications team here at the Sheriff's Office will let you know.
Here at fire management we want to emphasize that safety is paramount.
With prescribed fire being a pre-planned event that means we have time on our side.
Here at the Boulder County Sheriff's Office fire management we take fire seriously. Your safety is always number one.
Please share this video with your neighbors and friends to help spread the word about how we use prescribed fire in the county.
For any direct questions email us at bcfiremanagement@bouldercounty.gov.