Fort Carson fire department supports city, county

Crews from the Fort Carson Fire Department and the Directorate of Public Works continue to battle the fire in Waldo Canyon -- building containment lines, defending houses and supporting local fire departments through mutual aid agreements with the city of Colorado Springs and El Paso County.

The fire, which began June 23, is the worst wildfire in Colorado history, damaging or destroying more than 350 homes and claiming two lives.

As of Tuesday, the 17,920-acre fire is 70 percent contained, but continues to burn.

"It's heart-wrenching to see something like that develop," said Chief Glen Silloway, Fort Carson Fire Department, Directorate of Emergency Services. "I grew up here. I've been hiking in the areas that are on fire."

A 28-year veteran firefighter, Silloway said he's been involved with numerous forest fires, but the Waldo Canyon Fire created a level of destruction he'd never before witnessed.

"We as a community have been preparing for this," he said. "It was the worst-case scenario we'd been planning for, but hoped would never happen."

The beginning: June 23-25

Longtime Colorado residents recognized the plume of smoke rising from the Pike National Forest in El Paso County as an ominous sign. From his desk at the Fort Carson Fire Department, Silloway expected the call from El Paso County officials requesting personnel and equipment support to fight the blaze.

"We responded with a Type-3 engine company and a crew of four," he said, adding that a two-person incident management team from Fort Carson also assisted, but was later demobilized.

Although the fire began on U.S. Forest Service land, partners from the city of Colorado Springs, El Paso County, Teller County, U.S. Forest Service, Colorado State Forest Service, Colorado National Guard and firefighters from local departments, including Fort Carson, quickly came together in a mutual aid effort.

Fire officials remained cautious in their initial assessment of the fire. Dry fuels such as brush, trees and other combustibles, high temperatures and little humidity and the potential for high winds set the stage for a devastating scenario.

"The first thing you think about in a scenario like this is life safety," Silloway said. "You want to get people safe and out of the path and you don't want to put firefighters in the path of something that ferocious."

Silloway said the goal of firefighters when tackling a forest fire is to create anchor points or fire breaks with man-made or natural barriers such as roads, trails or creeks. By containing the fire within these barriers, firefighters can then begin to squelch the flames, eliminating fuel sources and eventually extinguishing the fire.

"That's what had been taking place from the beginning," he said.

Capt. Peter Wolf, a firefighter at Fort Carson, was part of the initial incident management team sent to support firefighting efforts.

"We were completely defensive," he said. "We could not establish an anchor point. We began prepping structures and we were successful. No structures were lost in the first 72 hours."

Wolf said crews adapted to the situation, positioning themselves between the fire and structures to prevent buildings from burning.

With near triple-digit temperatures combined with 30-mph wind gusts, the fire reached 3,446 acres. But Silloway knew that with those weather conditions, the situation could deteriorate fast.

"You could tell this was going to get way worse," he said.

Firestorm: June 26

Throughout the first three days of the fire, 450 firefighters from local departments attempted to contain the burn, closing U.S. Highway 24 and evacuating residents from Cascade, Cedar Heights Subdivision, Chipita Park, Crystal Park and Green Mountain Falls neighborhoods as a precautionary measure.

Fort Carson fire crews continued to support in the mutual aid effort, providing more firefighters and vehicles as needed, while continuing to staff and support its own department.

"We were still responding to other incidents," Silloway said.

Fire crews responded to three wild land fires June 25 in Fountain, Cheyenne Mountain State Park and Spanish Peaks in southern Colorado. Those fires were quickly extinguished.

The following morning, firefighters said they felt a peculiar calm.

"I remember thinking it was a quiet day," Wolf said. "But later that day, the fire progressed."

That day, Wolf took over a division of fire crews from Fort Carson and other neighboring departments, as well as a wild land firefighting team from DPW. His team of 56 firefighters, 19 engines and four dozers worked near the Peregrine neighborhood, building containment lines and prepping houses.

In the late afternoon, his crews were near the Flying W Ranch, a Colorado Springs landmark.

As temperatures rose and wind speeds increased, Silloway said the fire turned, cresting a ridge and hurling down the mountainside toward the U.S. Air Force Academy and Mountain Shadows and Peregrine neighborhoods.

"It was a wind-driven fire and, combined with the intense heat, it was consuming everything in its path," he said. "It did look like a fireball coming through there."

At Flying W Ranch, Wolf said the situation quickly worsened.

"It was organized chaos in a losing situation," he said. "Even if we had had 200-300 engines, that would not have helped. It was beyond our capabilities."

Wolf said he would never forget the scene that unfolded.

"It looked like war," he said. "All of a sudden there were 15 houses burning. … Wild land guys were running down the street with chainsaws just chopping down trees. There were chunks of roofing, embers and paper flying around.

"The smell, it burns your nose. It's an acidic smell. Everything is burning -- rubber is burning, plastic is burning."

Wolf said that despite the turmoil, crews joined together to save what homes they could.

"We had a lot of good saves," he said. "We saved a heck of a lot more than we lost. …

Everybody worked so well together. There wasn't a question of who was doing what."

Fire officials estimate that 81 percent of homes threatened by the fire were saved because of the efforts of fire crews.

"The temperature of a fire like that is in the thousands of degrees," Silloway said. "Once a fire starts consuming fuel, it is preheating everything in its path."

Silloway said that the fire, which reached temperatures of 2,000 degrees, preheated homes in its path, causing vapor to form on combustible items, such as decks and rooftops.

"All it takes is one ember to light and it will burn," he said. "When a fire moves that rapidly, at that point no amount of water is going to cool that heat. It just evaporates."

The aftermath: June 27-July 2

By June 26, more than 32,000 residents had been evacuated from their homes. By the morning of June 27, 346 homes were destroyed and the fire claimed two lives. In 12 hours, the fire grew from 3,446 acres to 15,517 acres.

"What took place Tuesday night, I've never seen that happen," Silloway said. "To see something like that develop and the level of destruction, it's hard to describe."

The morning of June 28, Silloway visited the Peregrine neighborhood.

"I had this odd feeling," he said. "There was nobody around. I got this weird, eerie feeling looking at the damage where the fire went."

A Colorado Springs native, Silloway said the devastation was prominent.

"We're going to have to live with this for years," he said. "It's not just the aesthetics of the mountainside, we're going to have mud slides and flooding. That vegetation did serve a purpose (beyond aesthetics)."

Although exhausted, firefighters from Fort Carson remained on the scene, sleeping in tents in fields or along the roadside to get some necessary rest.

"I had four or five guys sleeping on the asphalt with their heads on the curbs as pillows," Wolf said. "When you've been up for 36 hours, if you can grab an hour (of sleep), you do."

Nine members of the Fort Carson Fire Department had to evacuate their homes, including Wolf.

"We were on pre-evacuation status," said Wolf, who lives near Palmer Lake. "The best thing I could do was get my family safe and return to the fight."

Silloway said the men and women from his department remained committed to fighting the fire, despite being pushed to extreme levels of fatigue and exhaustion.

"At our high point, our engagement was up to 25 personnel, which is over a third of our operations," he said.

In addition to having personnel on the fire line, Fort Carson firefighters helped cover Colorado Springs Station 4 for five days, responding to more than 80 alarms.

To provide his team with a break from the long hours, Silloway requested firefighters as "back fill" assistance from fire stations at other installations. Six firefighters from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., and two firefighters from Fort Hood, Texas, traveled to Fort Carson to assist in day-to-day operations for two weeks.

"We worked them into the schedule and they slid right in as if they worked here," Silloway said.

Other teams from Fort Carson, including Soldiers from the 4th and 52nd Engineer battalions, and personnel from DPW, helped build firebreaks and provided vehicles and personnel to assist in the firefight along U.S. Highway 24 and the academy.

Community members have also shown their support, Silloway said, providing snacks and hygiene products to Fort Carson firefighters.

"It's people who are not directly impacted, but they're stepping up and that's great," Silloway said. "There is a personal effect, that's the nature of what we do.

"We're very proud of all the efforts of personnel," he said. "They all stepped up and came together."