The Colorado Strategic Wildfire Action program awarded the Indian Creek Property Owners Association (POA) a $41,773 grant for wildfire mitigation training. This POA, a Teller County non-profit, will train 52 volunteers in S-130/S-190/L-180 Basic Firefighting and Wildland Fire Behavior; 13 volunteers will receive their S-212 Power-saws certification.
The Indian Creek POA hosts a volunteer group named the North Florissant, Colorado (NoFloCo) Fire Mitigation Posse with over 60 members. This group of volunteers conducts mitigation work on properties throughout the POA as a community service. The fuels reduction is free of charge and does not require the recipient to be a member of the Fire Mitigation Posse. Members of the NoFloCo Fire Mitigation Posse will use the trainings to improve the mitigation work they conduct in the community.
“Not only will this training be a tremendous asset to the operation of NoFloCo Fire Mitigation Posse', but even greater will be the ability to educate, motivate, and elevate even more people to understand that fire awareness, fire mitigation, and forest health is their responsibility. You have chosen to live in a fire prone area; therefore, you need to take personal responsibility for your home, your property, your neighborhood, and your community,” said Don Moore, co-founder of the NoFloCo Fire Mitigation Posse.
The volunteers are training at Colorado Fire Camp, a highly regarded training center. The facility is located in Chaffee County and volunteers traveled from Teller County throughout 2022 and 2023 to receive training.
Volunteers benefited from the trainings and were immediately able to utilize skills learned. “This course has only strengthened my view on the importance of mitigating fire risk and how the entire community needs to be aware of the need to mitigate. Our role as NoFloCo should be to help mitigate properties of those who can't for themselves or who just need help. It should also be to educate and spread the word on the importance as it applies to the entire community,” said Mark Waldo, a trainee from Florissant.
“These community volunteers are true heroes, very caring, very committed to serve their friends and neighbors. We are very, very proud of them and very thankful to DNR and the COSWAP Grants,” said Toni Moore.
