CSFD crews begin wildland drill training
(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Fire trucks and crews will be visible throughout the month of April in the Skyway neighborhood. However, sirens will not be activated as this is not for an emergency, but rather a drill to prepare for one.
April 18 marked the first day of the spring wildland drill training, during which the Colorado Springs Fire Department (CSFD) will put its skills to the test and identify improvements in fighting wildfires.
“We’re doing our annual refresher training,” CSFD Deputy Chief of Operations, Steve Wilch, said. “We follow federal standards for a wildfire training and annually, all firefighters need to have certain topics and so many hours of training.”
Training in this open space, helps crews work on the southern Colorado vegetation, along with also navigating the terrain close to a neighborhood, which is known as a WUI (Wildland Urban Interface).
“That’s when our homes have been built into a natural environment, that is the wildfire environment,” Wilch explained. “So, we have scrub oak trees, light flashy fuels which are the grass, it’s in that natural environment we enjoy here in the springs, but it is a wildfire risk.”
There were two areas of focus in this training, specifically on crews’ initial attack and structure triage.
“Initial attack is putting our firefighters in harm’s way, [a] direct attack on the fire to stop its progression, that is so that we can save lives and structures,” Wilch said. “The second part of it is structure triage. What structure triage is, is we will evaluate the ability to defend those structures that’s where shared responsibility comes in.”
CSFD notified neighbors living in the area of this drill to prevent any alarm and to continue the conversation regarding wildfire risk.
“We have to make sure that as homeowners that we prepare our property to in a fire event, that it can at least withstand the initial brunt of the fire,” Wilch said. “The firefighters are going to get in there engage, but we can’t engage the fire. If the house was not prepped well enough and it becomes a risk to our people, we have to triage which structures that we can save and those that there was no preparation.”
A town hall meeting is scheduled for April 23, during which CSFD will inform community members about preparing their homes and ways to be ready if a wildfire event were to occur.
Rose Bills, who moved into the Skyway neighborhood in 2013, expressed her appreciation for crews conducting training in the open space. Years ago, she recalled waking to the sound of sirens when a fire started in that area.
“I’m very happy that they chose this place,” Bill said. “I know they looked at other areas when I talked to them. It was actually the guy who was on the [wildland] fire crew, he remembers that fire because he said he was out here fighting it that night. So, I said, this is a great place because of all the houses above and all the dry vegetation that we do get.”
During the drill, evaluators are alongside crews, observing and noting areas of improvement to ensure crews are well-prepared for any challenges they may face in fighting future fires.
“Then after the exercises [are] over, we will go over what things we needed to improve upon, what things went well, that goes from just the skills to the technique,” said Wilch.
Despite the cold and wet conditions in this morning’s training, it still is beneficial as crews never know what conditions they’ll face ahead.
“Here in Colorado, we will fight fire even with snow on the ground,” Wilch said. “Because our fuel, the grasses, will dry out very quickly when those red flag windy days come and we will have fires that will run to the ground, even with snow patches in the shadows.”
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