As many in the Canyon may have noticed, Thursday was a busy day for your Coal Creek Canyon Fire Department. We had three separate fires in the area of Scar Top and Crescent mountains that were all a result of single tree lightning strikes from Wednesday’s storm. Each of these fires grew to about 1/10th of an acre, and were fully contained by the end of day yesterday. CCCFD started out the day Thursday with some planned patrols because of the severe lightning the previous day, but quickly started getting reports of smoke and flames coming in from 911.
None of the fires was easily accessible, so we got support from a lot of neighboring agencies. Hand crews and equipment were provided by the US Forest Service (including Texas Fish & Wildlife), Timberline FD, Golden Gate FD, Jefferson County Sheriff, and Boulder County. Unmanned Aerial Systems (small drones) were provided by Boulder Emergency Squad to help firefighters on the ground get to the fires and search for other hot spots, and Colorado’s Multi-Mission Aircraft flew over and used infrared imaging to help us search for any additional fires in the area.
CCCFD personnel are hiking back into the sites of each of these fires this morning to make sure nothing new has flared up.
This was a good example of the partnership we rely on to keep the community safe. CCCFD will do patrols in times of high fire danger, but we also rely on vigilant community members to report smoke and/or flames to us through 911. We can then use the many firefighting resources at our disposal to identify the source and take care of it before it becomes dangerous.
