The office of Colorado’s District Seven Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen has scheduled a Fire Preparedness and Extreme Weather Town Hall in Buena Vista at 6:00 p.m. Wednesday, August 23. The session is set for the Buena Vista (BV) Community Center, located at 715 E. Main Street.
Pettersen will be joined by Commissioner Keith Baker and Fire Management Officer Chris Naccarato.
As instances of extreme weather have multiplied across the U.S. and the globe this past year, it becomes increasingly important for people to be prepared for extreme weather situations.
Image courtesy of MTPR
The country has seen record-breaking high temperatures and heat domes, tornado outbreaks and floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes. In other states, this has been another year of intense wildfires, like the brush fire that just destroyed the historic town of Lahaina and another massive wildfire now raging in eastern Washington State.
A check with Emergency Manager Rich Atkins who leads the Chaffee County Office of Emergency Preparedness related to this town hall session, confirmed that at the moment, we are not in extreme fire danger, but says Atkins, “Other parts of the state are definitely in bad shape.”
“We may go into a more severe fire threat, but that doesn’t necessarily mean fire restrictions,” he explained. “That is done by basically two authorities: first by the Forest Service and the BLM for public land, and Chaffee Fire, and Salida Fire for the county. Actual fire restrictions on residents would be placed by the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office; the sheriff is in charge of issuing those.
“We do have a fire mitigation officer with Chaffee Fire working closely with my office and the forest service,” Atkins added. “They issue a risk report about once a week. At this point, we are moving toward high-fire possibilities.”
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