ENVS Real Life

My second interview was with Erin who worked in Emergency Operations Center for ten days during the Waldo Canyon Fire and now Erin works in Emergency Management, which was her role during the Black Forest Fire. There were a lot of lessons learned from the Waldo Canyon fire that helped them when the Black Forest Fire happened.  Erin was relaying messages from the firefighters to the people briefing and letting them know what neighborhoods needed to evacuate. The Black Forest fire was known as a type one incident. Some people think that little amounts of moisture will help us, but it will only help out a little bit. Prolonged climate change affects the likelihood of wildfires in the state. Even with a ton of snow their could a wildfire burning under the snow which is consider deep moisture, but there is a difference fuels like if the grass is completely dry or if it has a ton of moisture. Erin mentioned that there were no community meetings after 2013, because there was a comfort level heavy rain. With the Black Forest Fire there was quicker respond time to fire than there was at the Waldo Canyon Fire. The Waldo Canyon Fire nobody expected the fire to come over the ridge and because it caught everybody by surprise it took time to get resources in place and there were not enough resources at first. For the Black Forest Fire there were quicker response from everyone including the military and communication. With the Spring Fire when it first started had the same characteristics of when Waldo Canyon Fire and Black Forest Fire, but the Spring Fire has more characteristics of the Waldo Canyon fire like iritic behavior that firefighters do not usually see in fires. During the summer of 2012 and 2013 they did not run out of water in reservoirs, but there was a concern about rampart reservoirs, because the water could have been contaminated for drinking water.