Firefighters Improve Wildfire Training in Colorado Springs
Jan. 06--Colorado Springs firefighters spent almost twice as much time training for wildfires in 2014 than they did in 2011, as a part of department initiative borne of a long-standing effort to prepare crews for the massive wildfires that have plagued El Paso County in recent years.
Early last year, Mayor Steve Bach asked the Colorado Springs Fire Department to up its overall wildland training hours by 5 percent -- and by using emails, training videos and neighborhood drills the department met its goal a year later.
"It was easy to meet for us," said Capt. Ed Breece, with the department's wildland suppression program.
The department will increase training hours by 5 percent again in 2015, Breece said. But the added training is only a small part of increases in training that the fire department has implemented since 2011, a year before the Waldo Canyon fire burned more than 18,000 acres and destroyed 347 homes in Colorado Springs.
Although the Waldo Canyon fire of 2012 and the Black Forest fire of 2013 have put catastrophic fires on the map for area residents, the Colorado Springs Fire Department have steadily accrued gear and experience with so-called wildland fires since 1989, when the department started training crews to fight wildfire. For years, Colorado Springs has had two fire stations that specialize in wildland firefighting -- Station 4 on Colorado Avenue and Station 9 on Centennial Boulevard -- but since 2011, the department has made wildland training mandatory for all fire crews working west of Interstate 25.
Firefighters have to be specially certified to fight a fire in wilderness; they take classes on fire weather, behavior and tactics that are unlike anything they will see battling house fires in a city. Firefighters are also required to pass a "pack test" -- hiking 3 miles in 45 minutes while carrying a 45-pound pack. While a city firefighter might work to save a single burning house, wildland firefighters work to contain, but not necessarily extinguish, fires. In Colorado Springs, all fire crews are trained to do both.
A year before the Waldo Canyon fire, the department began girding itself for what crews call "wildland urban interface fires" -- blazes that burn through foothills, neighborhoods interspersed with open spaces and U.S. Forest Service lands. Although all crews in the fire academy get basic training for wildland firefighting, starting in 2011 all new members of the department's eight westside stations had to be certified to fight a wildfire.
In 2011, firefighters logged 3,949 training hours; last year, crews put in 6,331 hours. The 2014 number was still lower than the amount of hours logged in 2012 -- 7,553 -- when Colorado Springs firefighters worked during the Waldo Canyon and other destructive fires throughout Colorado.
After 2012, when three record-breaking blazes ignited around the state, the fire department changed some things based on lessons learned. Fire engines are now stocked with extra wildland fighting gear, which is lighter than traditional bunker gear. The department also created radio "kits" -- three portable packs with 10 radios that are compatible with radios used by the forest service. Last spring, all officers were put through a week-long wildland boot camp, which will eventually be required of all firefighters, engine drivers and paramedics. On a smaller scale, at Station 16 in the Broadmoor Bluffs neighborhood, Breece's crew will do the pack test a couple of times a month.
Breece tried to calculate the number of brush trucks -- engines designed for rugged travel -- and other wildland specific equipment that have been added to a station's cache or fleet. But, he found, "it's easier to count who doesn't have them," he said.
-
Contact Ryan Maye Handy: 636-0198
Twitter @ryanmhandy
Copyright 2015 - The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
