Timberline Firefighters Alliance

For the median Gilpin County home, valued at $471,805, 7B would cost $192.49 a year. For the median Boulder County home, valued at $716,650, it would cost $292.39 a year.

Timberline's calls have more than doubled since the district formed in 2011. The mountainous terrain and lack of interconnecting roads limit how fast we can reach an emergency, so getting faster requires dispatching crews from more than 1 station.

Timberline is a combination department that relies on both paid and volunteer firefighters, and that won't change. But the volunteer firefighter shortage that has become a national crisis over the last 2 decades continues to impact us as well, all while calls for service keep increasing. 7B adds full-time firefighters so coverage doesn't depend on who's available. No matter the incident or the time of day, we'll be ready to respond.

How Timberline Compares

Timberline serves 175 square miles and responds to far more calls than any comparable neighboring fire district. Even with 7B, our mill levy will stay below some neighboring districts, while putting 4 full-time firefighters on duty 24/7 per day to cover our much larger, busier area.

Mill levies: Colorado Department of Local Affairs, Local Government Information System. Call volume and 24/7 staffing: Timberline Fire Protection District.

Most of our district is in Gilpin County, where 99.5% of residents live in the wildland-urban interface, more than any other county in Colorado, compared to 43% statewide. The state also rates how hard a wildfire would hit each area, and almost 7 in 10 of us are in one of the most dangerous zones on that scale.

A fire in a house built today can overtake a room, creating unsurvivable conditions, about 8x faster than it did decades ago, back before synthetic materials replaced wood and cotton. Because fires move this fast, how quickly a crew arrives matters more than ever. Keeping full-time crews at 2 stations puts more of the district within quick reach when seconds count.

A campfire left burning near Nederland in July 2016 became the Cold Springs Fire: 528 acres, 8 homes lost, more than 2,000 people evacuated. In December 2021, 100 mph winds drove the Marshall Fire through 1,084 homes in a single afternoon in Boulder County. Anyone who has lived here for long knows extremely strong winds are common in our district too.

7B will help maintain Timberline’s wildfire mitigation program, including hazardous-fuel reduction and community wildfire preparedness. It will also help maintain emergency reserves for major wildfires and other unexpected emergencies.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) timed the same house fire with 2 firefighters, then with 4, and the larger crew came out ahead. Reaching someone trapped in an upstairs bedroom was 3½ minutes faster, getting water on the fire was 16% faster, and completing a search for victims was 30% faster.

This isn't just about fires and large incidents that demand more firefighters. Timberline also responds to medical emergencies, vehicle accidents, search and rescue, and much more, and 2 calls at once is routine here. With 7B, when one crew is committed to a call, another is on duty and ready for the next one.