The state rep who sparked Colorado’s fire recovery – Grist

Hello, and welcome back to state of emergencya limited-term newsletter about how disasters are reshaping our politics. I’m Jake Bittle, a reporter for Grist, and I’ll be writing this newsletter with my colleague, Zoya Teirstein.

It is almost a truism that disasters provide an opportunity for positive change. That’s the idea behind President Joe Biden’s pledge to “build back better” after the coronavirus pandemic, and it’s also why FEMA has poured billions of dollars into post-disaster adaptation projects. But in the five years I’ve spent covering climate disasters, I’ve hardly ever seen a place change after a major flood or wildfire. Displaced victims scatter into hotels and rental apartments, developers and local lawmakers rush to rebuild everything as it was, and no one is getting safer or more resilient, even as the underlying risk increases.

The suburbs of Boulder, Colorado, which lost more than a thousand homes to the devastating Marshall Fire in 2021, are an exception to this rule. After the fire, a young councilman named Kyle Brown jumped at the chance to fill a vacancy in the state legislature, promising to speed up the waning rebuilding. After taking office, he worked with survivors to draft and pass a series of landmark bills that protect fire survivors and ensure that future wildfires cause less damage. In just one term, Brown helped make Colorado a national leader in fire resistance.

Like me reported this weekpassing these bills required Brown to take on a host of powerful institutions at the state capitol — insurance companies, banks, mortgage servicers, landlords and even homeowner associations. He might never have succeeded had it not been for the tireless advocacy of a group called Marshall Together, which brought hundreds of fire victims from neighboring towns together on the workplace messaging app Slack. The group’s founder, a lawyer named Tawnya Soumaroo, saw it less as a charity or neighborhood association than a political lobby: She studied housing and insurance law, collected stories from her displaced neighbors and told lawmakers advocate as a trade group or farm bureau might do. As the fire survivors flexed their political influence, industry groups pushed back, and Brown’s bills passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

These Boulder suburbs are denser and wealthier than many wildfire-prone areas, and it’s likely thanks to that privilege that residents like Soumaroo had time and resources to organize after the disaster. But many of the biggest reforms they’ve passed are forward-looking rather than retroactive, meaning the survivors of the Marshall fire won’t benefit. However, future Colorado fire victims will have strong protections against predatory behavior by mortgage lenders and insurance companies, which could mean the difference between rebuilding in one year or five years.

This is a powerful example of the dynamic we will explore in this newsletter: Extreme weather events not only destroy homes and buildings, they also change how people relate to each other and to their government. In Boulder, unlike in so many other places, that change has been for the better.

A focus on fire

Kyle Brown was the lead sponsor of 26 bills during his first term as a Colorado state representative, and half of those committed to either Marshall fire restoration or future fire resiliency. Although these bills challenged established industries such as insurance and banking, almost all passed, and with bipartisan support. Brown has had as much success with his fire legislation as he has with other legislation on more anodyne topics, such as bingo admissions and virtual wedding ceremonies.

Read the full story on the surge of legislation that followed the Marshall fire.

What we read

Should Biden Do More on Heat?: U.S. Representative Rubén Gallego, a Democrat running in a tight Senate race in Arizona, blasted the Biden administration for not doing more to tackle the threat of extreme heat.
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Oregon wildfires become a campaign issue: As Oregon wildfires burn thousands of acres, a Democratic challenger in the congressional district that surrounds Bend is attacking incumbent Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer for voting against billions in wildfire protection funding.
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Hurricane déjà vu in Florida: Hurricane Debby drenched northwest Florida last week, hitting the same areas hit by Hurricane Idalia last year. The hurricane also brought flooding to Tampa as early voting began in Florida primaries.
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Warm Weather Voting in Tennessee: Election officials in Shelby County, which includes the city of Memphis, said warm weather is slowing voter turnout in a primary election for state and local races in the area.
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Tim Walz, climate veep: The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, comes from a state that is immune to many major climate disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires. But as my co-author of the state of emergency reports, Kamala Harris’s running mate has an impressive record of passing major green laws in his purple state.
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