This Boise neighborhood was caught off guard by a 2016 fire. It won’t be again
On a June night in 2016, a teenager setting off firecrackers in the Boise Foothills started a wildfire that burned 2,500 acres near Table Rock.
Residents of Boise’s nearby Mesa neighborhood were unprepared as the fire crept toward their homes late that night. Many weren’t signed up for emergency notifications and kept sleeping. Others woke up and began knocking on neighbors’ doors to alert them. Some residents evacuated, taking the only road that led out of the neighborhood, while others stayed back to keep an eye on their homes. No one really knew what to do.
They got lucky, and the fire stopped just short of their homes. But Rod Haars, who had moved to the neighborhood from the Midwest only two years before, was angry about the close call.
“God, this could have been a disaster,” he told the Idaho Statesman.
He and other residents decided to take matters into their own hands over the following years: Through a neighborhood association committee they dubbed Municipal Emergency Safety Actions, or MESA, they mapped out their neighborhood and divided it into “pods” of about 15 or fewer homes. Each has a “pod captain” who would disseminate information and instructions in an emergency and works with neighbors beforehand to come up with an evacuation plan. They make sure that neighbors are signed up for Code Red, PulsePoint and Idaho Power emergency alerts.
In August, the team’s preparation culminated with a full evacuation drill involving the Boise Fire Department, the Boise Police Department and other first responders. Ahead of time, residents assembled “go bags” and talked through logistical details. Were any of their neighbors doctors or nurses? Could someone watch the pod’s children while parents were packing the car? Who had had a recent surgery and would need help getting out of the house?
And they worked through the kinks with the Fire Department, including what phrasing its notifications would use to make clear what phase of evacuation residents were in — whether they should merely be alert or should actually leave their homes.
It’s only during drills like these, Haars said, that people get into the nitty-gritty of what they’d need to do to evacuate quickly. In his case, it wasn’t until a drill that he realized he needed to bring along a litter box for his cat.
During the drills, “you can see how quickly time just ticks off,” said Laura Mathews, another leader of the group, which calls its organizers the “pod squad.”
It’s not pleasant to think through how an emergency could play out, but Haars and Mathews said forethought could make all the difference in a real fire.
“Having this plan gives me some kind of peace of mind or control over a chaotic situation,” Haars said. “I didn’t want to be in a maniac position with no control if a fire does come.”
Wildfire risk on the rise, fire chief says
A fire may come sooner rather than later.
Just weeks after the Mesa neighborhood’s evacuation drill last summer, it had to put what it practiced to the test during October’s Valley Fire, which burned 10,000 acres across the Boise Foothills.
The Valley Fire didn’t reach the Mesa neighborhood, and firefighters were able to keep it from damaging any structures in Boise. Fire Chief Mark Niemeyer in part credited Boise’s building codes for areas on the edge of the Foothills, which include various fire safety provisions.
But the limited damage of the Valley Fire was largely a matter of luck, he said. High winds had originally pushed the fire toward downtown Boise but changed direction before the fire came into contact with homes. And his department was able to get help from a federal firefighting plane that happened to be fighting a fire near Redfish Lake and was able to divert to Boise.
“We could have had a much more devastating result,” Niemeyer told the Statesman.
Next time, the city may not be so lucky — and there will be a next time, Niemeyer said. The weather is getting hotter, and vegetation is getting drier, which causes it to burn hotter and faster.
“The reality is, climate has changed, whether we want to call it ‘climate change’ or whether we want to call it something else,” Niemeyer said.
For Boise residents near the Foothills, that’s becoming a more tangible reality.
“I think the reality that fire is something we have to deal with and prepare for, it’s really starting to settle in with people,” Mathews said.
She and Haars said they’d seen an uptick in interest in the neighborhood’s emergency preparations after devastating wildfires ripped through Los Angeles in January. What happened there, including shortages of water to fight the fires, could happen in Boise, too, Niemeyer said.
“This is not a shock to us,” he said. “If you take a glass of water and you put 10 straws in that glass, and now you have 10 people surround that glass, and you all drink out of it at the same time, there’s no amount of flow that could keep up.”
His department plans to hold evacuation drills with other neighborhoods on the edge of the Foothills to “train the trainer,” Niemeyer said, in hopes that doing so can help expand the reach of the department’s limited budget for outreach and education. Those dates and locations are not yet set, Lynsey Amundson, a spokesperson for the department, told the Statesman.
As of April, Southern Idaho was not facing drought conditions, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, but “abundant” leftover dried-out vegetation from last year could pose a localized wildfire risk this spring if the area faces prolonged dry periods and high winds.
Preparing for the worst can be daunting, Haars said, but it comes with an upside: It’s brought the neighbors together.
“You get to meet all these people, and you have to start to work with them and depend on each other,” he said, “You can’t ask more from a neighborhood. If we work together, we’re going to be strong.”
This story was originally published May 5, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
