10th ABW commander holds town halls

  • Published
  • By Don Branum
  • Air Force Academy Public Affairs
U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. --  The 10th Air Base Wing commander held a series of town hall meetings July 2-3 to inform Academy employees and base housing residents about the events surrounding the Waldo Canyon fire and evacuations from Pine Valley and Douglass Valley housing areas last week.

Col. Tim Gibson and a team of subject matter experts, including representatives from the Academy Fire Department, the 10th Medical Group, the Finance and Personnel directorates and Forest City Housing, also answered questions aimed at quashing rumors and helping people who evacuated from their homes receive compensation for their day-to-day expenses.

Gibson kicked off each of his briefings with a short clip from a popular 80's movie wherein a young woman named Simone says, "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night."

"We don't need Simone," Gibson said. "Rumors will hurt all of us if we don't get accurate information out there." He called the last week an "interesting week for communication" but praised the Academy's Public Affairs office for updating the public via social media and its Waldo Canyon fire information page.

FIRE

Gibson said he was on the road when he first saw the fire, which started near the Waldo Canyon Trail on June 23 at about noon.

That evening, Academy firefighters joined the fight to keep the fire out of the Cedar Heights subdivision in southwest Colorado Springs, said Academy Fire Chief Ernst Piercy. Meanwhile, the 306th Flying Training Group converted the airfield into a helibase for helicopters assisting with firefighting.

But the fire quickly spread beyond local firefighters' ability to contain it, so two days later, the Air Force activated four C-130 Hercules equipped with Modular Airborne Firefighting Systems to assist, as well as calling in firefighters from several local bases and "Hot Shots" wildland firefighters from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

"The intent was to establish firebreaks along U.S. Highway 24 and Rampart Range Road," Gibson said. "On Monday (June 25), we pulled together our Emergency Operations Center to put together a solid 'what-if' plan. The most disastrous forecasts told us we would not have anything near the Academy until Thursday morning; we thought we had 48 hours."

Those 48 hours flashed away in less than two hours when 65-mph winds spread the fire to triple its size the day before. While 346 homes were destroyed, firefighters held the line at Centennial Boulevard, saving about 1,400 more, Gibson said.

"Even the most pessimistic forecasts didn't compare to what happened," Gibson said. "Queens Canyon was the primary defensive line. The fire jumped over Queens Canyon and spread 3 miles beyond that to the east.

"The hairs on the back of my neck started going up. The fire's behavior surprised everybody," the colonel added.

With the fire suddenly on the Academy's southern border, Gibson decided to evacuate base housing and the enlisted dormitories. The evacuation began with Pine Valley at 6:30 p.m. on June 26, followed by Douglass Valley at 9:30 p.m. State Patrol officials closed Interstate 25 southbound starting at Interquest Parkway to clear traffic for the evacuating families. Overall, Gibson said, the evacuation went without a hitch.

"We're having our historians check this, but in our records, there is no precedent for this. The Air Force Academy has never before been evacuated," he said. "You all made it look easy."

Fort Carson had prepared itself to receive all of the 2,100 people who evacuated from the Academy. In the end, they received just more than 50.

"You all are a bunch of popular people," he said. "We didn't have the demand we thought we would, but Fort Carson was ready for us -- they were ready for all of us: housing residents, cadets, permanent party."

Firefighters continue to work around the clock and have contained 70 percent of the fire as of Tuesday, Gibson said. The Academy's southwest border was fully contained Monday, with help from Fort Carson's 4th Infantry Division and 52nd Engineering Brigades and the contractor CH2MHill.

"It's not extinguished," he warned. "That will take another couple of weeks." Firefighters are working along the fire's north front to contain it near West Monument Creek.

COMMUNICATION

The EOC team was challenged on the communication front, from hiccups in the Falcon Alert service to rumors that spread like wildfire on social media sites like Facebook, Gibson said.

"Falcon Alert is like Twitter: We only get so many characters," he said. "To get one complete message out, we had to send three Falcon Alerts. And at times, we released a Falcon Alert (message), and it took time before it got transmitted." Officials' best guess as to the cause of the delay is that other agencies in Colorado Springs used the same company to pass information to other people, which may have strained the system's capacity.

Another hurdle with Falcon Alert is that it is only set up to allow registration from certain email domains. It does not accept registration from other email addresses people may use, Gibson conceded.

"That means our people who live here and work at Fort Carson or Peterson AFB were unable to sign up for the service," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, if you have a Hotmail address and want to get Falcon Alerts, you should be able to do that. So we'll figure out how to make that happen."

EOC officials also spent a lot of time trying to suppress rumors, Gibson said.

"According to all the phone calls I've received, we've evacuated the Air Force Academy four times now," he said.

However, EOC officials had to balance the communication mission carefully, Gibson said. Providing too much information could be as bad as not providing enough.

"I don't want information being turned into rumors. Did I tell you everything I knew? No. I tried to disseminate information that was actionable and relevant for you," he said.

Forest City community manager Amanda Bailey also said her office would strive to better communicate with housing residents.

"We hope something like this never happens again," Bailey said. "But if it does, we want to make sure we communicate it effectively."

However, the Academy also had some critical successes in its communication endeavors, Gibson said. Personnel with the 10th Security Forces Squadron "literally went door-to-door" to notify people of the evacuation order. Interpreters accompanied 10th SFS personnel to help at homes where English was a second language.

AFTERMATH

Gibson signed evacuation orders for parts of Colorado Springs that civilian officials had also evacuated so that employees who lived in those areas could receive federal dislocation benefits.

"If you're not allowed back in by civil authorities, then those entitlements are still in effect," he said.

Those entitlements pay up to $66 per day per service member or civilian employee plus $66 per day for family members older than 12 years old and $33 per day for children ages 12 and under to cover meals and incidental expenses. Mileage entitlements of $0.555 per mile will be paid up to the distance from the Academy to Fort Carson, approximately 27 miles.

Personnel must file vouchers at their unit's finance office: Someone stationed at Peterson AFB would file a voucher at Peterson, and someone stationed at Fort Carson would file with their finance office, said Lt. Col. Burke Beaumont, chief of the Academy's Financial Directorate.

"Non-appropriated personnel will be paid with appropriated funds," Beaumont said. "I expect we had about 5,000 people evacuated, so we'll probably process about 2,000 vouchers." Briefings scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. will provide displaced residents with more information.

"We will have everyone on-hand to stamp orders on (July 9-10)," Beaumont said. Residents whose spouses are deployed do not need a power of attorney to sign vouchers.

Gibson warned people to beware of scams that have followed the Waldo Canyon fire's wake in Colorado Springs. One such scam involves someone asking you to pay to reserve an appointment for adjustment or repair work. Another involves people going door to door soliciting donations, supposedly for a local charity.

In response to a question about whether some of the people working with contractors in the wake of the fire had criminal backgrounds, Gibson outlined the restrictions regarding who is allowed on base.

"People with outstanding warrants, people who've committed felonies within a certain period of time, sex offenders -- those people are never allowed on base. We are holding the line on standards," he said. "If they have an outstanding warrant, we go a step further and contact local law enforcement to come pick them up. It's a perfectly valid concern, but we've got your back."

In any event, Gibson added, "If it were me, when a contractor is going through my home, I'm going to be there. It's just prudent."

The colonel ended by highlighting what he called good-news stories, including large amounts of food that people have dropped off at fire stations to show their gratitude.

"You've been smart about this," he said. "It's not chocolaty, gooey stuff that will melt in a firefighter's pocket. You've dropped off protein bars, protein replacement shakes, beef jerky. It was really well done."

Meanwhile, the Academy Spouses Club has assembled red-and-yellow streamers made from surveyor's tape that people can tie to their car antennas as a way of expressing gratitude toward the firefighters, Gibson added.

"The fear is that people were going to put this fire out and then leave without ever seeing how appreciative people here are," he said. "These are a way of saying thanks to all of our firefighters. They're doing yeoman's work out there."