Last week, several local fire districts sent crews to Southern California to assist in the containment of the large-scale wildfires that have been ravaging the Los Angeles area since Jan. 7.
Firefighters from the Los Pinos Fire Protection District, Upper Pine River Fire Protection District and the Cortez Fire Protection District – responsible for parts of La Plata, Montezuma and Archuleta counties – arrived in Los Angeles on Jan. 12 to support containment efforts as the region struggled to control the devastating blazes.
The three departments each sent a truck with crews of three to four people after California asked for aid.
Roy Wilkinson, chief of the Cortez Fire Protection District, said his crew was “ecstatic” to be going to help.
“They jumped at the opportunity to assist those in L.A.,” he said.
The crews from CFPD and Upper Pine left on Jan. 11 to meet up with the Los Pinos crew before leaving for L.A., Wilkinson said.
Upper Pine River Fire Protection District Chief Bruce Evans said that all of the fire crews from Colorado were assigned to the Pacific Palisades, a region of L.A. located about 20 miles west of the city’s downtown.
The Palisades Fire is the largest of the four that have been burning in a ring around L.A. According to the Los Angeles Fire Department, the fire covers 23,713 acres.
“The crews are reporting back that … it looks like a nuclear bomb went off,” Evans said.
Fire containment is dynamic and the crew’s work has been shaped by the ever-changing conditions on the ground, Wilkinson said. He said they are mainly with other groups fighting the fire as of Friday, but have also been conducting structural protection, which involves using a building’s structural components to prevent the spread of fire and smoke.
Evans said that in the last two days the crews had been doing initial attack work from the Ventura County line over to Malibu Canyon Road.
Colorado is not the only state that has sent aid to California. Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Washington have all sent firefighters. Canada and Mexico have also sent personnel.
The way intrastate aid is requested and deployed occurs through two main channels: the Interagency Resource Ordering Capability and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact, Evans said.
IROC is a web-based system that helps the interagency wildfire community manage resources, both personnel and apparatus, that are available to send out of state, said Los Pinos Fire Protection District Chief Joshua Lorenzen.
As fire departments all over Colorado watched the situation in Southern California escalate, they began to update IROC with their available resources, Lorenzen said, and it did not take long before they received an order to head out.
Evans said the “order” was an EMAC request, from California Gov. Gavin Newsom to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis for 50 firetrucks.
Local fire departments are familiar with the difficulties of battling fires in dry, wind-prone climates, and the challenges faced in L.A. under similar conditions have led them to reevaluate and refine their strategies.
“I take away a lot of stuff from this,” Evans said. “I’m a student of every one of these disasters, and there’s always something to learn from them.”
Both Evans and Lorenzen said observing the disaster in L.A. has emphasized the importance of preparation.
Evans pointed to evacuation routes as a potential cause for concern. People need to know if there are alternative ways to get out of their communities, he said. Two-lane roads get jammed up with traffic during mass evacuations.
In Pacific Palisades, this became a hazard as cars were abandoned en mass by people trying to escape as the fire burned over the highway. Evans said the cars had to be bulldozed off the road.
In addition to clearing roads, bulldozers have also been used to contain the fires in place of aircraft as the California winds have reached speeds that make flying untenable. If aircraft are not an option, the only way to compensate is with bulldozers, Evans said.
He also said that the L.A. fires have spurred discussions among local emergency officials about contracting with heavy equipment operators during bad wildfire seasons.
“If we can’t get aircraft here in the Four Corners to knock down a fire, then bulldozers are going to be our next best bet,” he said.
Lorenzen noted that the events in L.A. have underscored the importance of partnerships between fire departments and other community organizations so that when wildfires occur there is not a mad scramble for resources and personnel.
It is unclear how long the local fire crews will remain in California, but Wilkinson said unless something drastic occurs, deployments like these are supposed to be for a maximum of two weeks.
However, Evans thought that President Joe Biden’s recent approval of FEMA support for fire suppression and debris removal could potentially expand local crews’ “visit” in California upward of 180 days.
“I hope it’s not going to be that long, because we’ll be well into our own fire season by then, but, you know, there’s a lot of devastation down there,” Evans said.
As of 7 a.m. Friday, 31% of the fires in Pacific Palisades have been contained, according to the L.A. Fire Department.
jbowman@durangoherald.com