JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — Three fire districts in Jefferson County are joining forces to keep mountain communities safer.
The North Fork, Elk Creek and Inter-Canyon Fire Districts are unifying to create the newly minted Conifer Fire District.
North Fork Fire Chief Curt Rogers will oversee the unified districts when the change goes into effect in January.
Inter-Canyon Fire Chief Skip Shirlaw will assume his new role as Deputy Chief of Conifer Fire, while Elk Creek Fire Chief Jacob Ware will become the new Operations Chief of Conifer Fire.
“We've gotten busier and busier in the mountain areas as the years have progressed,” said Rogers.
Unification will lead to quicker response times and the ability to hire more paid firefighters, something Rogers told Denver7 is crucial as the number of volunteer firefighters dwindles nationwide.
“We can build better response plans as a unified district. So for example, we can put more equipment on the road when we have a structure fire or a wildland fire,” said Rogers.
The three districts currently have a total of 65 paid and volunteer firefighters.
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The latest effort to consolidate was on the ballot in November 2023. It failed, with voters saying "no" to a mill levy increase that would allow more firefighters to be hired in addition to the construction of new infrastructure for the larger team.
Unification, however, doesn’t require a vote because it's not tied to an increase, as plans to build new infrastructure are not part of this plan. The entire unified district will be at the North Fork base mill levy (12).
This, however, also means less firefighters will be hired through the unification process.
“We have three legal councils, three fire chiefs, three of everything. If we move that into one, then we're going to be able to have more money that we can put towards personnel and equipment,” said Elk Creek Fire Chief Jacob Ware.
Twenty-thousand people live within the North Fork, Elk Creek, and Inter-Canyon fire district boundaries, with many more passing through daily, lured by the plethora of outdoor recreation in the region.
US 285 carries close to 1.5 million visitors through the region every year, which has led to an increase of emergency calls on the road.
“It takes a significant amount of people to actually manage those accidents safely, and that taps us out very quickly,” said Ware.
“That's what worries us the most is, if someone calls 911, we won't be able to respond to them,” added Inter-Canyon Fire District Chief Skip Shirlaw.
Combine that with calls for rescues and injuries out in the wilderness, on top of the five major fires this summer alone — including the Quarry Fire, which burned 579 acres in August.
The fire chiefs said keeping nearly 600 homes safe was a team effort; one that will only grow stronger when the unification goes into effect next month.
“We knew each other's other skill sets. We had confidence in that, and immediately we're just gelling. And I think the results, we had no houses lost, no lives lost,” said Shirlaw.
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