Local Motion: Delta County Emergency Management

In this edition of Local Motion, we talk with Kris Stewart, Delta County's Emergency Manager. Stewart provides an overview of the county's emergency management office's role and responsibilities.

You can sign up for the county's Emergency Alert System.

Local Motion is KVNF's weekly public affairs program. It airs Tuesdays evenings at 6 and Saturday mornings at 10:30.

• The purpose and work of the Delta County Emergency Management Office.
• The unique geographic and environmental challenges faced by Delta County, such as wildfire, flooding, and agricultural burning, and how they affect emergency management.
• The department's work to improve wildfire mitigation and community preparedness.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Lisa Young, KVNF: Kris, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself and how you became involved with Delta County Emergency Management?

Kris Stewart, Delta County's Emergency Manager: [I] grew up in Delta County. I've lived here for over 30 years, graduated from Hotchkiss High School. I started with the sheriff's office back in 2011 after going through the academy here at the tech college. Worked on patrol and was an investigator as well before moving into emergency management in the fall of 2018.

Young: What is emergency management?

Stewart: An easy way to describe emergency management is we're the people to do the planning for all hazards, natural hazards, and intentional acts of terrorism, where we work behind the scenes to coordinate and collaborate with agencies across the county at all different levels, both local, city, county, state, federal, to make sure everyone's on the same page. So if we have a bad day, we have a plan, and we also help get resources when there's an incident. We're fortunate here that we don't have as many incidents as other parts of the state even, or let alone the country, but it's still important to have emergency management to do a lot of different things.

Young: Are you under the Delta County Sheriff's Office or are you a standalone office?

Stewart: Emergency Management is a division of the Delta County Sheriff's Office, and we currently have two full-time employees.

Young: And who is the other employee that works with you?

Stewart: We recently hired Mindy Brennan, who is our emergency management coordinator.

Young: Who are some of the key partners that you work with here in Delta County and maybe within our region?

Stewart: I try and build good relationships and work closely with all five of our fire protection districts, our local police departments, obviously the Sheriff's Office, Colorado State Patrol, Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Colorado Dam Safety, who watches out for the safety of all the reservoirs that are state or privately owned. The Federal Bureau of Reclamation for the federally owned dams in our county and neighboring counties that would flow into our county. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management are also huge partners that we work closely with, especially during wildfire season. Regionally...every county has an emergency manager. It's a requirement under state statute, and we meet at least once a month as a regional group with all the emergency managers. We have a six-county region of Delta, Montrose, Gunnison, Ouray, Hinsdale, and San Miguel County.

Young: I'm always curious about when does emergency management get involved in an incident? Because not every incident that takes place within the county rises up to the level of needing the Office of Emergency Management to get involved.

Stewart: Typically, we're brought in when there's unmet resource needs and incidents growing so fast that there might be specialized equipment that we don't have locally. Or we need to evacuate people from an area because it's not safe [like] a gas leak, a wildfire, flooding, something like that. Like I said earlier, our job is to coordinate and collaborate. So we run what's called the County Emergency Operations Center, where we bring in those stakeholders from different groups, human services, public health, the hospital, and other medical groups across the county and the region. Anyone that would be a subject matter expert or an agency that would have some impact on that incident that we're responding to, we're there to help coordinate and bring them in to support the agency or agencies that have jurisdiction over fire. We say in emergency management that we have a lot of responsibility but no authority because I can't direct a fire chief to do anything. I can't direct a police chief or the sheriff because, obviously, I work for the sheriff. We're there to support each of those entities, not direct them and tell them what to do.

Young: That kind of does lead into the question that I had about who assumes command. The last big incident that I remember reporting on and actually speaking with you about was COVID-19, where you actually had an incident command room. As far as assuming command of, say, an incident center like that, is that under the Office of Emergency Management for the county, or does it depend on the incident? Is it depending on what's happening and what's needed?

Stewart: That's a good question. Emergency management scales up. Incidents start and end locally. Let's take the Currant Creek Fire that we had last year up in Cedaredge that's under the control...it started with the Cedaredge Fire Protection District. It was signed over to the county, the county sheriff because the sheriff is the fire warden. And then, the sheriff turned it over to the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, and the state assumed command of that fire and they delegated authority to an incident commander from the U.S. Forest Service to run that fire. When it's actually running and directing resources on the ground, expending money, that's headed up typically by a chief or an agency administrator from an agency that has the legal authority to be doing that action, like directing a fire, law enforcement, responding to a law enforcement incident, etc. During COVID, we just set up in a conference room and we bring people together and we coordinate. We brought in National Guard, people from public health. So no incident is the same.

Young: How is the Office of Emergency Management funded?

Stewart: Staff is funded through the sheriff's office through the county. There are federal grants out there that some counties utilize for emergency management directly. We used to take advantage of those grants, but we don't any longer because we found that it was a lot of extra work that wasn't fulfilling the needs of the citizens in what we needed to do here in the county for not a lot of returns. Our position...both FTEs and Emergency Management are funded entirely through the county budget, under the general fund, through the sheriff's office.

We take advantage of state and federal grants for a lot of different things that we do. Emergency management kind of delves into a lot of different things. Wildfire mitigation, all-hazards planning...our hazard mitigation grant that was funded through a grant through FEMA. We just applied for a grant through U.S. Forest Service for wildfire mitigation. We secured a grant two years ago through the Colorado State Forest Service for wildfire mitigation. While our salaries aren't directly funded through grants, we do work closely with different agencies and grants to accomplish our mission.

Young: One of the areas that I'm interested in is Delta County. If you could maybe describe it geographically and the unique challenges that there are to emergencies when they take place here in a rural county.

Stewart: Well, Delta County is a unique and beautiful county, but sometimes our geography can be a challenge. We start on the Western Edge and beautiful canyons and red rocks and kind of desert landscape out in Dominguez-Escalante and some wilderness areas out there and then move into Adobe Badlands. Not a lot of people live out there. It's mostly BLM land out far west where we border Mesa County. And then we move into the river corridors of Delta, which present challenges with the flooding risks because we got the Uncompahgre and the Gunnison Rivers that merge. That's the confluence, why it's called the delta. So we have risks of flooding in the spring, but also risks of wildfire in the river corridors here around Delta. The Cedaredge and Orchard City areas are up on the plateau leading up onto the Grand Mesa on the south slope, some risks that we face up there, pinyon juniper trees on-slope, drier climate and drier habitats. Wildfire can grow rapidly in pinyon-juniper forest, especially during the peak summer when we have lightning storms and/or someone is burning and it gets out of control and takes off in dry fuels.

And then moving up to the North Fork saying we have a mixture of ag lands, canyons, pinyon/junipers, and then up into the national forest and higher elevation. So we kind of have terrain that varies in different risks in each community. Wildfire [and] flooding dams are some of our top challenges across the county. 56% of the land is owned by federal agency...U.S. Forest Service, BLM, [Bureau of Reclamation]. So we have to work with our federal partners on maintaining that land. We have a good agreement, all the counties do, with our federal partners, through the sheriff's office, emergency management, and fire districts, and then our state and federal partners for fire impression. It used to be, years ago, when I started...they wouldn't provide mutual aid. If it got to within a mile of the Forest Service or BLM [land] and it was on private property or vice-versa, that's the only time they would kick in mutual aid to come help put out that fire. And now it's county-wide. Some people don't know that all five fire protection districts are 100% volunteer-staffed. They do great work year-round, but they need support, and they have other jobs that they need to get back to, so they can't always be out there on the line. that mutual aid that comes in from state and federal partners is invaluable.

Young: Kris, I want to turn the page here and talk about something that takes place every spring. It's like tradition. I remember growing up as a kid that on our little 10-acre farm, we would go out and burn the ditches in the springtime. Springtime is ag burn season and we want to talk about preparedness and steps to prevent fires from getting out of control and also the requirement to call the burn line.

Stewart: If you're new to the Delta County community...you might not know this, but we don't require permits to conduct agricultural or open burning in Delta County like some other communities do nearby. However, we do have a resolution in Delta County, and that applies in unincorporated areas of Delta County that requires you to notify or call the Delta County Burn Line. It's a 24/7 recorded line that's manned in dispatch and they check it throughout the day. And that recording tells you if the weather conditions [are] safe for you to burn ditches, burn your fields, or if there's a Red Flag Warning, High Wind Warning, or some other restrictions in place that you are not legally allowed to burn that day.

The number is 970-399-2955 and follow the prompts given to you on that line. If it is okay to burn, they'll ask you to leave your name, address [and] a callback number where you're burning so that if someone calls in a complaint of a fire, dispatchers can get ahold of you and confirm whether you still have control of that fire or not, so that we're not unnecessarily sending out the fire department.

There are a few things that are not legal to burn when you're doing burns this season. Keep in mind that you cannot burn on a Red Flag day or high wind day because it puts people at risk. Also, you're not allowed to burn trash, rubber, plastic, construction waste from buildings, homes, or other construction or anything that creates black toxic smoke. Also, no burning in burl barrels. If you're doing a bunch of brush clearing this spring and you're making large...what's called slash piles of big piles of dead trees and brush...that actually requires a slash pile burning permit through Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Young: We're going to move from ag burning to spring runoff. Kris, what are you looking for when you're looking at spring runoff?

Stewart: County emergency managers across the Western Slope always watch snowpack levels and runoff closely because if snow comes off in a hurry, that's when we have the risk of flooding. We like the snowmelt to come off nice and slow. If you have culverts on ditches, if you have ditches flowing through your property or waste ditches or even just culverts along the road at your property, make sure those are cleaned out and there's not debris piled up in the ditch or something that's going to be sucked down into a culvert and block that up and cause flooding. Because if a culvert gets plugged up with debris and stuff, it could wash out our roads.

Young: What do you think this year? Are you expecting a large runoff but based on the snowpack, it doesn't look that way...

Stewart: I think this year's going to be pretty moderate. Obviously, I don't have that crystal ball. I wish I did, but we will be starting up probably weekly calls with the National Weather Service here soon. [In] 2023, we had a lot of snowpack on record-breaking snowpack like up on Uncompahgre, and there was a lot of concern. We were very fortunate that that snow came off slowly, but there was still a lot of water that came in volume that came down like the North Fork of the Gunnison River and significantly changed that channel. It all depends how fast it warms up. If we get a rain-on-snow event where it rains up high, that accelerates the snowmelt. So we'll just have to wait and see.

Young: I want to talk about wildfire mitigation and the ongoing efforts with the West Region Wildfire Council and future plans around wildfire here in the county. An update of the community wildfire protection plan, what can you tell me about that?

Stewart: The county applied with the West Region Wildfire Council, which...is a nonprofit based out of Ridgway that serves as the west region. Again, that's Delta, Montrose, Hinsdale, and San Miguel Counties. Their entire mission is to accomplish wildfire mitigation on private property and work with the State Forest Service on state lands. Sometimes, they'll work on federal lands, but typically, it's mainly on private property. The county and the Wildfire Council applied for a grant through the Colorado State Forest Service in 2023 and were successful in obtaining that grant. It's a total of $800,000 over four years. Then what the Wildfire Council does is they have a team of foresters and wildfire mitigation fuel specialists.

They'll come out, evaluate your property, look at the defensible space you have around your home. What's your home constructed of? Do you have a cedar shake roof? Do you have trees right up against your house, hanging over your roof? Do you have pine needles in your gutters? Where's your vulnerability to wildfire? If you have a significant wildfire risk...that can be mitigated by trimming trees and cutting back to create defensible space around your house, they can work with you to enter into a cost-share agreement to do that work for you at a reduced cost. They'll facilitate the contractors do a contractor showcase, and they want to encourage people that live together within a neighborhood to do it so they can maximize the effort for the contractors and get as many properties in the line as possible, mitigate it to reduce the wildfire risk to multiple people, not just one home.

Some people get afraid of wildfire mitigation, thinking, 'Oh, they're going to come in and cut every tree on my property down.' That's not what the goal is. It's actually to create a healthy forest and thin out the crown, thin out the ground fuels so that [when wildfire approaches] your house [it] has a chance to stop before it gets to your house and burns your house down.

We just applied for a grant to update our Community Wildfire Protection Plan. That's a master plan for the entire county that encompasses all the municipalities, unincorporated Delta County, and the five fire protection districts. And that's really to look at where's the risk greatest to wildfire in our county. What can we do to mitigate or lessen the impact of wildfire? Because every wildfire is unique.

Young: Kris, since we're talking about emergencies, I think we really should talk about emergency alerts and encouraging folks to sign up for those.

Stewart: Emergency alerts are very important, and even though we don't send them out as often as larger communities on the Front Range or other states, we encourage everyone to sign up for Delta County Alerts. That's our countywide emergency alert system. Learn more about alerts and to register should go to [our website]. There's information on that page about how the alerts work and an actual link to sign up. Signing up, you can opt-in to receive an automated phone call, a text message, an email if you need it, TTY for [the] deaf. We have an official Delta County Facebook page where alerts are always posted to, so you can follow that by default. They're in English. They do also translate into Spanish. And we also have partnered with an app called Reachwell. We'll take and translate the emergency alerts...to 130 different languages.

We do also have the ability to activate IPAWS, the federal emergency management agencies' integrated public alert and warning system. So if you think about the warning that comes across your radio, when you get that tone, and you're driving and they're doing the emergency alert test or the ticker tape on your TV for severe weather, or when you get an Amber alert for an abduction of a child on your cell phone, those are all three are ways of three forms of IPAWS alert.

Young: I'd like to talk about something that came up during the Delta County Board of Commissioners meeting recently. Lisa Pool, who is a representative for Sen. Hickenlooper, was at the Board of County Commissioners meeting doing an update. And just briefly, during that update, you mentioned some funding issues with Fema. You said that the county is having issues getting a $200,000 grant or grant money. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Stewart: So as far as that grant with FEMA, currently the county and the West Region, there's been an ongoing grant that started after 9/11 called the State Homeland Security Grant Program. It's through the state of Colorado. We have nine all-hazard regions. The West Region, as I've talked about today, is one of those regions that gets money through the Homeland Security Grant. Each year, there's different priorities set by FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. It's a terrorism prevention grant that funds law enforcement and other things that keep us safe. And Delta County puts in for different projects. Each year, we've been applying to that grant. Then you have three years to spend the money. So we have three active years of grants and projects that we've been trying to fund and get ready to purchase, and we have some projects that we're getting ready to pull the trigger on ordering.

We have some access control for county buildings. The hospital is pursuing some security cameras for their campus. Hotchkiss PD is trying to get a generator that is portable that we can use in emergencies to power Town Hall or another facility between those. We have over around $200,000 worth of projects that are in the pipeline that we would like to be able to order. It's 100% funded by federal, through FEMA. There's no local match required on any of that equipment, but due to just the current administration at the federal level, all those funds have been put on hold right now. They're currently under review.

Young: Kris, I want to wrap it up by going back to a couple of personal questions. The first thing I would like to know is what is the biggest challenge that you face in emergency management?

Stewart: Probably just time. We have so many different projects going on and not enough hours in the day. There's a constant need to support different agencies and plans, not only here at the county, but with our partners and meetings and stuff. So, with two of us full-time, all we can do to keep up with all the different products going on, but it keeps us busy.

Young: What is the most rewarding part of your job, being the Delta County Emergency Manager?

Stewart: No day is the same. It's being able to work on different things and help prepare the community and try and mitigate that risk so that when we do have a bad day, we can all be in a better place to help the whole community.