Large numbers of firefighters and other emergency services personnel have been mobilized to assist with the severe flooding in Colorado. Two Type 2 Incident Management Teams in the Rocky Mountain Geographic Area, under Incident Commanders Dallas and Del Grosso, are working in Boulder and Larimer Counties, respectively. The IMTs reported Sunday evening they are working with 4 Type 1 crews, 5 Type 2 crews, caterers, miscellaneous overhead, and a total of 1,505 personnel which includes 245 responders from FEMA. The National Interagency Coordination Center Monday morning said 12 Type 1 crews have been dispatched.
When the weather allows, a massive evacuation effort using 15 helicopters is taking place, which is necessary because many roads and bridges have been washed out. Some of the helicopter evacuations were conducted at night by the Colorado National Guard using night vision equipment.
The weather over the weekend allowed only intermittent air operations but after 10 a.m. today improving conditions should allow hundreds of people to be brought out of areas isolated by damaged roads.
Helicopter service charging for rescues?
We can’t vouch for the validity of this video that was posted September 15, 2013, but the title is, “Colorado Flood Chopper Pilots Charging $1200 For Rescue”. Anyone know more about this?
I have numerous friends and colleagues in that area. Unfortunately, I have been busy cleaning up after a storm 10 days ago in BIL and have not had any time to reach out to anyone on the Northern Front Range until tonight.
I see that two Missoula Smokejumpers left for Colorado yesterday.
Good thing that the wildfire situation Nationally is a non-factor for resource competition, or this could get real interesting? One of these days there will be hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, maybe another 9/11-type terrorist event and bunches of wildfires all yelling for IMT teams and manpower resources at the same time: then what happens?