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Banner image: Engineers survey the foundations of a home burned in the Marshall Fire. (Credit: Casey Cass/����������)

The drone whirs to life on a driveway in the Spanish Hills neighborhood of Boulder County. Its four spinning motors lift it to nearly 200 feet above the ground. Below, the cul-de-sac comes into view, revealing the stone chimneys and blackened foundations that dot the hillside—what remains of many of the houses in this neighborhood after flames swept through on Dec. 30 and into the morning of Dec. 31 during what would become known as the Marshall Fire.

Brad Wham trudges through the snow to join about a dozen other researchers who have gathered to watch the flight this morning. They’re wearing hard hats and neon safety vests. As an engineer at ����������, Wham studies how water pipelines and other “lifelines” can maintain their functionality during natural hazards, such as��earthquakes and wildfires. He also lives in Louisville, Colorado, and had to evacuate his own home on that same day.��

“I’ve deployed to Japan and New Zealand to study disasters very shortly after they occurred,” said Wham, an assistant research professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE). “It has been a different experience to have them happen in my hometown.”��

The Marshall Fire, which spread throughout much of Boulder County including the towns of Superior and Louisville, became the most destructive fire in Colorado’s history. More than 1,000 homes were lost, and approximately 6,000 acres burned. One person remains missing, while another was confirmed dead.

In coordination with local officials, Wham and his colleagues from Oregon State and Purdue universities have been surveying the damage since first-responders extinguished the flames. The effort is part of an��initiative funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF)��called (GEER), which deploys researchers to disaster sites around the world. The team hopes to better understand the disaster from a uniquely engineering perspective: Why did some houses burn, for example, while neighboring homes survived? How did critical services like water, gas and electricity hold up during one of the worst disasters in Boulder County’s history?

Time is of the essence. Soon, bulldozers and excavators will crawl through the impacted areas to begin the slow process of rebuilding—and much of that information will be gone forever.

“I think what we’re doing here is going to be beneficial in the future, especially with other communities that are going to have fires,” said Jessica Ramos, a senior at ���������� who’s working on Wham’s research team.

The Marshall Fire swept through this cul-de-sac in the Spanish Hills neighborhood. (Credit: Casey Cass/����������)

Heat map

Erica Fischer, a structural engineering professor at Oregon State University who leads the GEER team along with Wham, joined the researchers in Spanish Hills on this windy morning in January.��

In many ways, the neighborhood shows why people have flocked to Boulder County in recent decades. Its rolling hills offer a startling view of the ���������� campus and the Flatirons beyond. But, Fischer notes, wildfires have been an inescapable part of these kinds of beautiful landscapes since long before humans settled here—and, as the climate warms in Colorado, they’re likely to grow worse.��

“I would love to have this view,” she says, standing on a snowy hillside. “This is incredible, but beautiful scenery is created out of disaster. That’s how mountains are formed. That’s how lush forests are created. Understanding that is important.”

She and her colleagues are hoping to help people to live more safely within this dynamic environment.

They’re taking a multi-pronged approach to the research. They’ve utilized laser sensors to create 3D models of homes and retaining structures burned in the fire. They’ve also deployed flying vehicles like the quadcopter drones—on loan from the at the University of Washington.��

This kind of interdisciplinary reconnaissance related to a wildfire has never been done before by GEER,” said Shideh Dashti, an associate professor in CEAE who leads an interdisciplinary research effort at ���������� called Resilient Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity. “The solutions we come up with need to be holistic.”

As one part of that fast-moving effort, the group is working to recreate a heat map of the path the fire took through towns such as Superior and Louisville.��

Fischer explained, as concrete heats up, it changes color, turning pinker the warmer it becomes. Students from Oregon and ���������� are inspecting the foundations of homes in the region, using custom-made color swatches to try to estimate how hot the flames got—giving them a better sense of what happened inside those homes as they burned.��

Members of the GEER team watch a drone take off from the Spanish Hills neighborhood. (Credit: Casey Cass/����������)

Team members survey damage from the Marshall Fire. (Credit: Casey Cass/����������)

The team plans to publish its initial findings through a publicly-available report in March.

Ultimately, the researchers hope to bring together lessons learned from the Marshall Fire for other communities across the West. Fischer noted that recommendations like the and the have long laid out how homeowners can safeguard homes from wildfires. Building a gravel skirt around your house, for example, can help to buffer it from flames. But many of those recommendations are expensive to put in