Apartment fire spread department extremely thin

Tuesday’s four-alarm fire at a Colorado Springs apartment complex required about two-thirds of the city’s fire resources, forcing the department to do a lot of reshuffling to handle other calls for service.

The department estimates about 22 trucks responded to the fire at the Quail Cove Apartments.

On a typical day, anywhere from 30-35 trucks are available to respond to emergencies, each truck carrying a crew of four firefighters.

Once the fire grew to a second and third alarm, it triggered what the department called “move-ups”, where crews farther away from the fire relocate to stations closer to the fire, and handle other calls for service that the trucks at the fire would normally handle.

In extreme cases, such as the Waldo Canyon fire, crews from surrounding communities will relocate to stations in town to handle calls, as part of a mutual aid agreement that CSFD maintains with surrounding departments.

“Cimarron Hills could go backfill Station 17. Manitou Springs might come and backfill Station 3 or 5. Fort Carson might come and backfill Station 4,” explained Battalion Chief Kevin Bird

An example of putting those agreements to use is the Waldo Canyon fire, when nearly all the city’s resources were devoted to fighting that fire, and crews from as far away as Arvada and Wheat Ridge brought their trucks to fill in the gaps in town.

Bird says the department’s dispatch system uses a combination of GPS tracking and human intuition to evaluate the available resources and determine whether extra help is needed to ensure no one in town is left unprotected.

“If someone calls for help, we want to be able to arrive quickly and make a difference in what’s going on,” he said.

The fire department is required by the city to arrive within 8 minutes to 90 percent of the calls.