City leaders recap lessons learned from Waldo Canyon Fire

It was one of the most devastating disasters in the history of Colorado Springs, and now leaders are taking a closer look at how they handled the Waldo Canyon Fire. Today, the mayor and city council talked about the lessons they learned.

“You don’t think it would ever happen to us, right, but it has,” Mayor Steve Bach said. “It’s happened to 346 of our fellow citizens who’ve lost their homes.”

Now the city is creating a play book to avoid future fumbles. Leaders say they don’t have all the answers, right now. But they do have the right questions.

“Do we want to make changes to building codes? Do we want to make changes to zones?” said Council President Scott Hente.

Mayor Bach says it starts with people taking this kind of threat seriously.

“I’m talking about building materials, people who still have shake shingle roofs ought to rethink that,” he said. “Having landscaping too close to home, particularly trees and shrubs that have high fuel content.”

The reverse 911 system could also use some tweaking. The cell phone network crashed during a critical time.

“People should not have been making calls instead of sending test messages, because text messaging takes a lot less bandwidth,” Mayor Bach said.

The city did make some great plays, like gaining yards on public safety.

“We evacuated 22,000 people in just a few hours with no incidents or injuries,” Mayor Bach said.

Councilman Hente says we saw great things from the community.

“The absolute heroism and bravery seen by public safety police fire, heroism seen by the Colorado Springs utility workers as they were fighting through the fire.”