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Jan. 17, 2001 By Melanie Brubaker Mazur Southwest Colorado is getting its first Hot Shot crew to help fight fires in the region and around the country. The San Juan Interagency Hot Shot Crew will be made up of 20 career and temporary employees trained and equipped for rapid response to wildfires. The team will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and will respond to a call within two hours. While the crews are trained to fight wildfires, during slow times they can respond to local fires, said Mark Lauer, fire management officer for the San Juan Public Lands Center and supervisor of the new crew. During the winter, crews will work on prescribed-burn projects on Forest Service and BLM lands, he said. The San Juan crew will be an interagency team, but costs will be paid by the U.S. Forest Service. Maintaining the crew will cost about $600,000 annually, Lauer said. There will be costs to start up the crew, but Lauer did not have an estimate on how much they will be. The San Juan crew will be one of five Hot Shot crews in Colorado. In addition to the San Juan crew, the Forest Service sponsors the Pike Interagency Hot Shot Crew in Monument and the Roosevelt Hot Shots in Fort Collins. The National Park Service sponsors the Alpine Hot Shots in Rocky Mountain National Park, and the BLM sponsors the Craig Hot Shots in Craig, according to a news release from the public-lands center. Hot Shots make an average of $27,000 annually in salary, which is comparable to local firefighters, Lauer said, but they earn more overtime and hazardous-duty pay than most firefighters. Although the work Hot Shots do is just as dangerous as the work performed by local firefighters, "it’s on a larger scale," he said. Durango was chosen as a home for the elite firefighting crew because of its proximity to recent large wildfires and its central location, Lauer said. The establishment of a Hot Shot crew in Durango is part of the implementation of the National Fire Plan, which was written after the 2000 fire season, when 2.3 million acres of national forest burned. The plan increased Forest Service funding by $1.8 billion to pay for more firefighters and to thin woods that fuel fires, especially near homes and communities. Members of the local crew will be recruited at job fairs in Ignacio, Cortez and Durango to try to make the team "a true Durango Hot Shot crew," Lauer said. He said he wasn’t sure where the crew will be housed or conduct its training. Having a Hot Shot crew close by will provide a boost to local firefighters during hot summers, said Jim Piccoli, chief of the Upper Pine River Fire Protection District, which has numerous wildfires most summers. "When it’s dry, your crews gets spread pretty thin," Piccoli said of the volunteer forces that serve the eastern portion of La Plata County. "You’re scrounging for people." Being able to call in a crew of experienced firefighters who can get to a fire quickly can help keep it under control, he said. In addition to the Hot Shot crew, the Forest Service also is set to open the Durango Air Tanker Base this summer. The base will allow aircraft to fill up with fire retardant and water for fighting fires and will be located near the Durango-La Plata County Airport. A P-3 Orion airplane, which can hold up to 3,000 gallons of water, will be stored at the base from May to October. A smaller plane, used to direct large aircraft into fires, and a helicopter will also be stationed there. "I am pleased that Southwest Colorado will now have a Hot Shot crew as part of their arsenal to fight the wild-land fires in the Four Corners area," said U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Colo., in a news release. "The Bircher Fire at Mesa Verde is a good example of the potential damage that can be caused by these dangerous natural threats." |
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Copyright © 2001 the Cortez
Journal. All rights reserved. |
