After fireworks started a fire during the Palisade Peach Festival on Friday evening, Colorado House of Representatives members Matt Soper and Donald Valdez reviewed plans and offered state resources to contain the fire and ensure public safety. Soper and Valdez encouraged fire crews to make use of a multi-mission plane as well as a helicopter or tanker plane.
According to Soper, a CMU almunus and former student trustee, the multi-mission plane has, “high tech lightening detection technology onboard. The plane can also detect hot spots.” Soper said the multi-mission plane is fee free of charge to local fire protection agencies and gets leased out to surrounding states, “as it has better technology than the federal government’s planes.
Additional measures were considered for fire containment, including a fire retardant bomber, which was on standby. According to Soper, environmental concerns about putting chemicals on a fire so close to the Colorado River made the bomber’s use an undesirable option.
“The fear in the morning was a hot, dry wind and we wanted to take precautionary measures,” Soper said. “As of today the fire is out and no state resources ended up being used, but we were beginning to prepare for the worst case scenarios.”
