A wildfire crew from Delaware is spending the next two weeks in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain region to help battle one of a handful of blazes there.
The 20-member Delaware Forest Service wildfire crew is made up of two women, and 18 men. They’re in Colorado fighting one of six uncontained large fires.
Kyle Hoyd is the assistant forestry administrator with the Delaware Department of Agriculture’s Forestry Service.
He says the crew flew out of Philadelphia July 4th enroute to Denver.
“From there, they made their way to Canon City, Colorado, which is about three hours south of Denver, where they are doing initial attack operations for the Forest Service BLM Office in Canon City.”
Hoyd says the Delaware crew is the only crew working in Canon City. He notes they are doing initial attack operations because of their qualifications and training.
“They’re going to be getting GPS coordinates based off of infrared imagery where its showing new fire starts. And our crew will head to those areas" said Hoyd. "They’re going to drive to those locations, hike into those locations or possibly fly into those locations via helicopter and try to supress that fire and knock it down before it becomes a much larger fire."
Hoyd points out the crew’s work is extremely dangerous, in part, because the topography is very steep and fires are starting on top of ridges, due to nightly dry lightning strikes.
Delaware last sent a crew to the Rocky Mountain region in 2017.
