A fire broke out Monday morning near Boulder, Colorado and quickly spread over 3,500 acres. Authorities have reported that 1,000 homes and around 3,500 people have been evacuated from the area. So far, authorities do not know how many homes have been lost. They also do not know what caused the fire. An investigation will take place after the fire has been put out.
There are five stages of a crisis:
-Detection
-Prevention/Preparation
-Containment
-Recovery
-Learning
Right now the wildfire crisis is in the containment stage. Firefighters are hard at work to get the flames to stop spreading and then put out completely. Officials have been hard at work evacuating people. The Red Cross set up and evacuation center at the University of Colorado and a shelter for livestock was set up at the Boulder County Fairgrounds. Details like these seems that Boulder officials had a crisis plan.
However, one detail makes me believe that Boulder officials did not practice their crisis plan often. For two hours their alert system malfunctioned and officials were not able to send automatic calls to residents to tell them to evacuate. One resident reported that if they had waited for the call, they would be dead. Hopefully, when Boulder County enters stage five of the crisis they learn that they need to practice their alert system more often and look for kinks.
No deaths from the fire have been reported.
Read the full story here.
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