1-Color
January 22, 2014
75 cents Teller County, Colorado | Volume 53, Issue 4 A publication of
pikespeakcourier.net
Work on the burn scar has just begun By Ashleigh Hollowell Contributing writer
On June 23, 2012, the Waldo Canyon Fire began. Seventeen days later it had burned more than 18,000 acres: 14,422 acres of National Forest land, 3,678 acres of private land, and 147 acres of land belonging to the Department of Defense. Now, nearly two years after the fire has been declared out, the work in the burn scar has only begun. Even before the fire was officially confirmed out, U.S. National Forest Service members were up in helicopters observing already-burned areas to plan for reclamation, completing thorough assessments of the burn damage in order to create a comprehensive plan of attack. On the ground, they were creating fire lines with boulders to assist firefighting efforts and doing so in a manner to protect watersheds in the area. Ten days from when the fire was declared out, the U.S. National
‘When areas lose mature vegetation in such a devastating way, it can take 60 to 80 years for the area to be restored. It’s not like a situation where there is a broken watch and you just go fix it. There’s no fix for this. There’s a lot more work to be done.’ Dana Butler, member of the U.S. National Forest Service’s Pikes Peak Ranger District Forest Service had time to request money for restoration and flood mitigation. Specialists from California were called in to help evaluate the flood potential the fire had created and assist in hands-on work. “Within 30 days we had spent literally millions of dollars on the burn area,” said Dana Butler, member of the U.S. National Forest Service’s Pikes Peak Ranger District,
Pike National Forest Hydrologist and Coordinating Contractor for the Waldo Burn area. Watersheds are areas of land that separate waters flowing to different rivers, basins or seas and therefore are a crucial element involved in flood mitigation. “Immediately following the fire there was a Watershed Assessment of River Stability and
Sediment Supply or WARSSS study conducted. In that report, it was determined that there were 113 sub-watersheds and 87 of them were determined to be disproportionately supplying sediment downstream. About 87 of those 113 watersheds were Scar continues on Page 5
Hospital takes a forward view By Pat Hill
phill@coloradocommunitymedia.com With mass shootings, bomb threats, biological and cyber attacks on America’s radar, Pikes Peak Regional Hospital hosted a “what-if-it-happens-here” conference last week. To highlight the role of the hospital in a possible traumatic incident in Colorado Springs, executives dramatized the event with a landing in the helipad by a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. The helicopter could transport a large number of victims. “We’re here to talk about the threats along the Front Range,” said Colt Simmons, a retired Air Force officer who lives in Florissant. “How do we deal with the medical aspect of that threat and how do we recover and be resilient?” Highlighting recent disasters in America, Dr. Richard Harris of Woodland Park, who helped design and launch the hospital in 2007, was blunt. “In the medical area I’ve seen things designed in a way that are phenomenally stupid,” Harris said. During Hurricane Katrina, for instance, the main hospital in New Orleans put generators on the ground floor, Harris said. “They knew the generators would get flooded, and they only had a 24-hour supply of fuel,” Harris said. “The result was that they had to move all these critically-ill patients out of that hospital.” Harris was unsparing in his criticism. “Nobody thought about what-if, what-if. Before 9/11, nobody had come up with shoot-down-the-airliner policy if it’s headed toward a huge-populated building,” he said. “I’m tired of it and ready to see you folks figure this out for us where I live.” Simmons agreed. “We are here today to look at the facility, get some ideas, look at requirements and see what we can do to help prepare for incidents,” he said. Before touring the hospital, however, John Gay, executive director of the National Resiliency Center and founder of the NRC in Aurora, offered up a reality check. POSTAL ADDRESS
A Black Hawk Army helicopter added drama to a conference at Pikes Peak Regional Hospital Jan. 15 on preparing and recovering from a catastrophe perhaps in Colorado Springs. In the event of mass casualties, PPRH could be a transport site. Photo by Pat Hill “Everyone sitting at this table knows that bombings, shootings and natural disasters are a way of life,” Gay said. “You can’t hide from it anymore.” Gay, along with Steve Haynes, has been involved in homeland-security issues for the past several years and has worked in conjunction with the federal government. But the Aurora theater shooting was another wake-up call. “There were things that happened afterward that were not in anybody’s disaster or incident plan,” Gay said. Dealing with bureaucracy impedes immediate solutions, Gay said. Despite obtaining White House approval for the center in Aurora, it took two weeks before
FEMA would allow access to the site, he said. Now opened, the 9,000 square-foot NRC facility offers free counseling with a psychologist and a group therapist. “Anybody can use the facility for one-one-one counseling six times,” Gay said. With so many Americans suffering financial disasters and emotional turmoil, Gay proposed that every community have a facility like the one in Aurora. “I’m talking to the commissioners right now,” he said. “You can lower the stress levels with a resiliency center; that’s one of the smartest things a community can do.” Haynes added another element to possible disasters, among them, a biological-
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warfare scenario leveled by North Korea, whose leader has named Colorado Springs as its second most-important target behind Washington, D.C. However, PPRH looked ahead on a number of issues that could hit the people of Colorado Springs. “With a contamination bay, we can get poisons and radiation off people before they enter the hospital, a requirement that’s in the building code,” Harris said. “A lot of things in this hospital people don’t know about.” The conference concluded with a tour of the hospital whose executive director is Terry Buckner. Commissioners Dave Paul and Marc Dettenrieder were also on hand.
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