Wildfire Collaborative brings 3-D wildfire modeling to Carbondale to map local risks

Angie Dablin, who works for the Wildfire Collaborative, told attendees the group has partnered with Carbondale Fire and other valley communities to bring high-resolution wildfire modeling to town.

"I am Angie Dablin. I work for the Wildfire Collaborative," she said, and explained the team recruited Dr. Hussain Mahmood (formerly at Colorado State University, now at Vanderbilt) to produce community-specific, three-dimensional simulations of how fire would behave around buildings and terrain.

Dablin described the modeling approach as highly detailed: it factors building orientation and materials, vegetation, slope and wind, then simulates roughly 5,000 possible ignition points—lightning strikes, human activity and mechanical sparks—to overlay hundreds of fire runs and identify repeating fire-path patterns. The maps will show flame height, areas where ground crews would be ineffective and where aerial attack might be required.

The model also predicts smoke movement and can identify potential safe refuge areas, which Dablin said is especially important in small towns where quick evacuation may be impossible. Early results from the group’s work in Marble identified a previously unrecognized safe area east of that town, an example Dablin used to illustrate the model’s local utility.

The presentation framed the modeling as a decision-support tool to pinpoint where proactive fuel treatments, firebreaks or structural retrofits would be most effective given limited local resources.

The Collaborative plans to use the model outputs to guide mitigation investments, evacuation planning and community education; Dablin asked community members to help by providing household-level data through a short survey.