Demand soars for rural emergency teams

Faced with rapid population growth, rural emergency service providers along the Front Range are finding new ways to support their life-saving services.

“The urban interface wildfire problem is growing rapidly,´ said Bob Gann, fire chief of Rist Canyon Volunteer Fire Department. “Growth is outstripping the ability of local (fire and emergency medical service) departments to keep up.”

The Rist Canyon VFD has doubled in size from two stations and four working vehicles five or six years ago to four stations and eight trucks.

Now in its 22nd year of existence, the Rist Canyon VFD has 22 active responders and serves a 96-square-mile area. It serves a population base of 1,000 to 2,000 people that varies seasonally.

A growing population is intensifying the need for emergency services in the area.

“In 1980, it was a rare situation for a fire [in a rural area] to threaten a structure. Now it’s about every other fire,´ said Don Griffith, emergency services specialist with Larimer County Emergency Services. LCES is responsible for wildland fire suppression on private property, fires in unincorporated areas, search and rescue, and dive rescue for the county.

There are essentially three ways that the public supports emergency services. First, some volunteer departments are not-for-profit corporations, including Rist Canyon VFD, Larimer County Search and Rescue, and Larimer County Dive Rescue.

The organizations thrive on donations of money, services and equipment, fund-raising events, grants, and resource sharing.

Second, most fire departments and many hospitals and hospital ambulance services are special taxing districts. Eaton Fire Department and the Poudre Health Services District are examples.

They take their sustenance from property taxes, county contingency funds and grants.

Third, in Colorado, county sheriffs are responsible for emergency services, and the sheriff’s budget, also tax supported, pays for some county emergency services not provided by local departments.

Despite the increase in demand for services, Griffith said Larimer County Emergency Services’ basic budget hasn’t increased since the early 1980s.

“The problem we run into now,” Griffith said, “is most fires require more resources [than previously]. So the same number of resources are being applied, but we have to spread those out.”

Yet emergency services continue to save lives and property by employing a mix of fund raising and resource sharing.

In Larimer County, the fire service closest to the fire responds to it first, whether it is the National Park Service or state Forest Service, Larimer County Emergency Services or a volunteer fire department. If a structure is threatened, air tankers may be called in from Jefferson County or the state.

This mutual-aid arrangement helps control not only fires but also costs, Griffith said. Larimer County Emergency Services stays within its budget many years in part because many volunteer fire departments handle fires in its territory.

“The resources of volunteer fire departments have increased to where sometimes we don’t even need to respond,” Griffith said. Also, because much of Larimer County is National Park Service or state forest land, much of the burden of fire fighting falls to those government entities.