Shortly after starting my job as your Fire Chief, I published an article for you all entitled Partners in Preparedness. The theme of this article was that “it takes community to protect a community.” While at the time I wrote those words I was mostly thinking of our community’s response to a wildland fire, that phrase is perhaps more important now than it has ever been.
With the current COVID19 situation in mind, we need your help in protecting our community. We need you to follow the stay at home orders, and, if you are an “essential worker” be diligent in your social distancing while at your place of work.
Please don’t let yourselves be lulled into a false sense of security from this, thinking that as a somewhat remote mountain community we won’t be effected. There are both confirmed and expected confirmed cases of COVID19 here in Coal Creek Canyon.
Your Fire Department has put into place its Continuity of Operations Plan to ensure we can continue to provide the emergency response that you expect and deserve throughout this situation. Our success in executing our Continuity of Operations Plan does not depend solely upon myself, my officers, my firefighters. YOU are a huge part of this. Please help us by following the directives of the CDC and the Governor’s Office.
As Laura said to me when we took the family for a walk yesterday, “It’s beautiful here. If I could choose any location where I’d to have to shelter in place, this would be the place.” Go for a walk. Enjoy our beautiful surroundings. Appreciate the canyon lifestyle and do your part to help protect it.
We have gotten through wildland fires together as a community. We have gotten through historic floods and blizzards. We can get through this too, so long as we work together.
CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/
Colorado Stay At Home: https://covid19.colorado.gov/stay-home-except-essential-needs
