LONGMONT, Colo. (KDVR) — Multiple state agencies took to the sky Sunday morning to learn how to fight wildfires from up above.
Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control teams up with the Colorado National Guard and a couple of local fire departments every year to make this training happen.
Brendan Young, an instructor pilot with the Colorado National Guard, still remembers the first time he saw a wildfire from a helicopter.
“It’s really intimidating,” Young said.
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An intimidating sight they fortunately didn’t see on Sunday. Instead, the Boulder Fire Rescue Department put together a convincing simulation.
“Everything is as real as can be, except actual fire on the ground,” said Erin Doyle, wildfire operations specialist for Boulder Fire.
The goal is for crews to be prepared for the real thing when the time comes. Doyle calls training like this increasingly necessary.
“Knowing that with the continuation and expanse of wildland fires in the region, in Colorado, we need to have well-trained responders,” Doyle said.
So, they do their best to make everything feel lifelike. Sunday’s task was bucket training.
“Creating a simulated fire environment for the national guard to practice the very basic things, such as deploying the bucket from the aircraft, dumping actual water and dropping it on simulated fire,” Doyle said.
The chopper lowers a bucket into a body of water, and the pilots communicate with firefighters on the ground every step of the way. They carry that water to a simulated target area and dump it, just like they would in a real fire situation.
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National Guard Chief Warrant Officer 3 Daniel Bentley’s first fire came in 2019 in Pueblo.
“The exact same training that we do here helped immediately with the fire that we did in Pueblo,” said Bentley.
Training makes this difficult task not as daunting.
“It may seem intimidating at first, but after training, it’s pretty calm,” Young said.
Other crews joining the National Guard included the USDA Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the Longmont Fire Department.
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