Wildland Fires - Vlog 10

[Music] [Music] you guys notice something new in our office we got a light weird on Tuesday the 26th we got our kickoff to wildland season here at South Metro really it's kind of year-round in Colorado any time that we haven't had measurable precipitation humidity is low that gets dry and we had a little wind component we definitely have fire danger so last Tuesday we responded to two different brush fires the first one happened in Station 40s first do area off of highway 85 and Airport Road that one was pretty unique there was a dump truck that raised its dump that up and make contact with power lines which created arcing and sparking on two sides of railroad tracks they go through the area started about two acres on fire luckily the driver wasn't injured even though his truck made contact with energized power lines and the fire didn't extend to the truck either it was just in the grass so we responded to that fire 78253 Street go ahead back up thanks for checking in go ahead with the weather okay your temperature of 75 are each 13% at 14 and tender 1/3 to approach you've seen with 3,000 gallons and water where would your lectures come Apio 10 there attacking that fire line now and we'll coordinate on our end with a brush engine 40 over hammer that's flying on the west side of the river fret near Highway 85 an airport road burned about 2 acres in Douglas County [Music] crews mopped up what was left of this fire in Douglas County earlier Wednesday afternoon it's a perfect example of how quickly this now toward grass can dry out even after a blizzard in the same area just a couple weeks ago Colorado problems right Eric worse was South Metro Fire Rescue says that's because grass is what's considered to be a one hour fuel meaning that's how long grass will hold moisture before it becomes susceptible to burning as soon as moisture leaves us we dry out throw some wind on there and some daytime heating every hour that ticks by the grass is reacting negatively and losing moisture so when the weather is nice and warm what is it crews have to be even more alert okay if you want to start that way and then I'll be over there with you okay for the next possible wildfire we yeah we just got another brush fire this time in Parker the second fire that came in was in the town of Parker right on the border of Arapahoe County and in an area along the Cherry Creek Trail South Metro firefighters go to the Cherry Creek Trail quite often for brush fires it's an area where a lot of teenagers frequent so we tend to see fires related to either smoking activity or playing with fireworks or just playing with fire in general the cause of this fire will remain undetermined there was no evidence left behind but usually it's a human caused fire and some kind of behavior that's provided local what's up guys so Connor and I just came from a brush fire in Douglas County it was our first fresh fire of the season it got upgraded to a large brush fire with two acres and while we were on scene in fact I was doing an interview with 9 news a second large brush fire came in and Parker thankfully we had Pio Kim on call tonight so Kim was able to respond from home she was pretty close to where we're at and took over the Pio role right away I got good information out to the community because people around here were kind of scared it was burning close to houses what did you see when you got here maybe 200 feet to the truth bed over here and so when we walked up the fire was 20 feet in the air in the cottonwoods very Freudian special luckily the crews weren't able to stop that right from the start and so they're really just putted in the crew fed and now they're working on it two weeks ago today we had a blizzard and now we're standing here with fresh buyers so it doesn't mean one yeah it just goes to show you that we can we can see that snow and all of that moisture that comes just a few weeks ago and then we're seeing two fires today and in complete complete opposite areas across the district so everybody be safe out there just to leave everyone we're doing to mitigate [Applause] I learned a lot that day especially on this second fire because the fire was burning in an area where there were some dead trees and so that has some snags possible dead tree branches that come into play so it was a really big known hazard for the firefighters that were on that fire and just to be aware of that and to be in that area safely and to keep out anyone who is non-essential personnel out of there so that they didn't put themselves at risk yeah you'll hear Connor and I talking about LCEs a lot and safety is a really big deal for us on every call that we go to but certainly on wildland fires there's a lot of added risk especially since we operate pretty independently on the scene we have to know what's safe and where to be and where not to be on those scenes and we're always very vocal about that so we're constantly talking about LCEs where our escape routes going to be where our safety zones located at identifying hazards and all that and that's a conversation that happens throughout the incident the whole time that we're on scene so big things about wildland it's a sticker that's on your MBC LCEs lookout communication escape route safety zone we have plenty of lookouts on this fire because we've got tons of chiefs all over it so we know that there's enough people watching for us that if something bad happens they'll let us know communication means that your radios on ops five okay escape route so for now as we're operating on this side of the fire our scape route would be to come back to the trail and into the wind and the safest way to escape is probably out the way we came winds blowing it that way so that would probably work really a safety zone at this point would be just get back to the sidewalk on the other side of the trucks and we'd be ok with that the other safety issue here these big trees he's cottonwoods and willows what were they talking about the widow-makers were falling down exactly so you want to say well outside of the perimeter of where the fire burned because the fire goes up the hollow trees will burn out the big branches cut them down so we need to stay out of that area as best we can following hose lines is a good way in but we'll do our best to actually stay like well on this side just to watch out for those snacks as they come down so we'll probably follow this and then we'll go over to the left where those guys are we're in the start of the spring Greenup where people's grass is starting to get green but in the absence of full green and living fuel we have doormat grass Eric hearse with South Metro Fire says even though we just had a blizzard humidity right now is low paired with Wednesday's warmup and breezy conditions just because we have one really big dump of moisture whether that's rain or snow it doesn't take long in this case just a couple of weeks until we were ready to burn down here well there is no offseason for brush fires heat plays a role keeping these crews busy as we move into warmer months so right after the second brush fire call came in I actually went off call and I went out of town for a few days so Connor and Kim were responsible for Pio role and being on call for the district and they responded to a hazardous materials incident that's right so on Saturday that hazmat call went out and it was in an area that was right near a 470 at Quincy so when we got over there a lot of different agents have responded what they had told us when we originally got on scene was that it was a suspicious device that was in a small body of water that was smoking so since it was near such a large roadway at the port 70 they actually ended up closing that section down as well as other parts of the road nearby just to make sure they fully investigated what that device was so I'm gonna take you on the scene there now Kim right now has taken some pictures hey so we have to stay quite a ways away from where the situation is occurring so we're trying to zoom in and get some more images of what's going on but there's a big roadblock that's right here behind us does with any hazmat situation we really don't want to rush into something we don't know what we're getting into so they're doing a lot of investigation with a Sheriff's Office bomb team so they're more operational you can go down closer to it but we're just very slowly progressing we really in order to investigate what's going on as we were on scene South Metro got to use some technology the UAV otherwise known as a drone to fly over to where the suspicious device was to try to I get a better view of it while also maintaining a safe distance so that helped in gathering details and we're two stage crews and how to get crews over there in order to fully see what that device was it actually ended up just being some wires that were arcing out of the ground so no one was in danger luckily after that we want to give a shout-out to UVM rescue out of Burlington Vermont for sending us a package including another patch that we get to add to our wall so that's super awesome thanks for doing that yes we love interacting with all of you on YouTube on all of our other social channels and things like this is really neat so thank you so much for connecting with us for sending this our way and of course continue subscribing sharing our videos and keep on posting telling us what you'd like to see because we really enjoy bringing you a different content every single week thanks again for all your great feedback upcoming videos are going to include more in depth suite Fridays because we know you want to see more of the apparatus up close and the return of unscripted which we'll be featuring matcom our 911 dispatch center and that's going to come your way soon so thanks again for watching see you guys later

Channel: South Metro Fire Rescue Centennial, Colorado

Views: 60,952

Keywords: south metro fire rescue, smfr, smfr pio, smfr pio vlog, south metro vlog, smfr vlog, wildland fire, wildfire, hazmat, connor wist, eric hurst, kim spuhler, south metro fire, south metro, colorado fire department, fire vlog, fire department vlog

Id: UhmBm-dpiCU

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2019