County building official outlines Poudre Fire Authority's 2024 fire code changes and wildfire-code coordination

Larimer County Building Official Eric Fried briefed the Board of County Commissioners July 28 on the Poudre Fire Authority’s adoption of the 2024 fire code and related issues including appeals processes and wildfire construction-hardening requirements.

“State law says that for a fire code to apply in a fire district in the unincorporated part of the county, the board of county commissioners has to approve the administration of that fire code,” Fried told commissioners, explaining why the county must act on fire-district code adoptions that affect unincorporated areas.

Fried summarized key changes in the Poudre Fire Authority code compared with the 2021 code. He said one notable amendment reduces the maximum unsprinkled fire-containment area from 12,000 square feet to 5,000 square feet, a measure intended to compartmentalize fire spread absent sprinklers. He said Poudre included an amended approach to its board of appeals after county attorneys raised questions about an earlier practice of having the county board of appeals serve as the fire authority’s appeals body.

On process, Fried said Poudre will stand up a subject-matter expert board of appeals if an appeal arises, rather than routing appeals through the county board. He noted appeals are rare but said the differing approaches between city and county systems contributed to a protracted review process.

Fried also raised wildfire-code coordination. He described a staff proposal to treat nearly all county parcels as medium-to-high wildfire risk and to require Class 2 structure-hardening measures broadly, rather than maintaining a class 1 versus class 2 distinction. “My proposal is that the county simply, consider all parcels in the county to be medium to high fire danger,” Fried said. He said he has discussed similar steps with the Loveland fire marshal to achieve consistency across jurisdictions.

Fried told the commissioners that several other fire districts — Loveland Fire, Berthoud Fire, Windsor Severance Fire and Front Range Fire (Johnstown) — are also updating to 2024 codes and staff plan to present those adoptions in August. He said staff are pursuing intergovernmental agreements to coordinate administration and enforcement of wildfire construction and defensible-space rules to avoid confusing overlapping enforcement by multiple entities.

Commissioners asked about the wildfire hazard maps, the role of volunteer fire departments in administration and interactions with recent state legislation that affects enforcement authority for homeowners associations or similar entities. Fried said those interactions are still being worked out and that staff plan follow-up work sessions and intergovernmental discussions; no formal county action was taken at the work session.

The discussion was staff-level guidance and preparatory to future code-approval items that Fried said would likely appear on consent agendas, subject to commissioner review.