FREMONT COUNTY — Year over year, the number of wildfire starts in Colorado continues to increase.
It has created the need for more fire pros who can be part of incident command teams.
“A big push of this event is to work on training new people to do new tasks and be able to help us in different ways,” said Devin Haynie.
Haynie is leading one of the exercises during three days of training for incident management teams working with the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control (FPC).
It is an FPC event joined by other First Responders from and areas around Fremont County where the training is taking place.
“We know fire is going to come. And we just want to be better prepared to work as a group and all the agencies to have that response capability,” said Fremont County Emergency Management Director, Mykel Kroll.
This exercise focuses on skills at the incident command that is always near but at a safe distance from the fire-line.
“Bring folks into controlled environments, work on these processes when we're not mission critical. And we're not losing houses, and we're not actively burning acres,” said Haynie.
A key element is learning how improving technology works along with potential limitations in rural locations.
“We're looking at technology to help our incident management teams, our operations folks really develop the best strategic plan,” said Incident Management Team Safety Officer, David Vitwar.
The training aid firefighters.
It also matters in communities like Fremont County because wildfire is a common threat.
“Wildfire--one small wildfire can be devastating if things have to shut down,” Kroll, “People have to move their livestock, change their whole lives around to adapt and overcome.”
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