COLORADO SPRINGS — Colorado’s wildfire risk has many similarities to Southern California.
It is why local leaders observe and watch for lessons learned.
“We're going to look at after action reviews. We're going to look at case studies of what happened in California, and then evaluate our processes of how we can be better prepared,” said Pikes Peak Regional Office of Emergency Management, Director, Andrew Notbohm.
“I would say we evaluate our tactics, our processes, our procedures, our ability to communicate with the community and the mitigation,” said Colorado Springs Fire Marshal, Brett Lacey.
An important part of that is listening to questions asked by the public.
“It shows gaps in knowledge with regard to where we've been trying to communicate,” said Lacey.
Emergency managers also want the community to recognize the risk and be involved in both risk reduction and emergency preparation.
Public involvement is essential to tactics like wildfire mitigation.
“We can't fight a fire when it's in the crown, up in the tops of the trees. So all of the effort we put toward mitigation is trying to keep that fire down low, modify the behavior so it's a lower intensity,” said Lacey.
The Golden Hills Homeowner Association has been proactive about mitigation in the neighborhood.
Seeing the wildfire around Los Angeles is a reminder of why they do the work.
“You know, not to the same scale, but you can certainly pick out certain areas within town that look very similar,” said Golden Hills Homeowner Association President, Robert Hicks.
Clear here for more information from the Colorado Springs Wildfire Ready site.
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