In response to the South Rim Fire burning in Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, Montrose County School District has designated Johnson Elementary School as the Incident Command Post and primary fire operations center due to its close proximity to the fire and the availability of ample open space for staging.
KVNF's Senior Reporter Lisa Young spoke with Mikayla Unruh, Montrose County School District Public Information Officer, on the district’s involvement in the fire response.
Unruh said the district saw the elementary school as the perfect location to house the incident command post due to its proximity to the fire burning in the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
The actual number of fire fighters and other support staff can vary over the course of the response.
"So the numbers vary a little bit day to day. We say it's a few hundred folks typically that we're seeing out there consistently between the firefighters who are actually camping and the eighty so incident command folks who are in there. Again, those numbers are subject to change, though, too, on a day to day basis," Unruh said.
The fire which began on Thursday, July 10th due to a lightening strike has grown to over 4,000 acres and with zero percent containment, the incident will likely be ongoing for sometime.
With the school year is just around the corner, Unruh told KVNF that the school district will have to re-evaluate the situation, if the fire response continues into mid or late August.
"Because this incident has come up quickly, this is, you know, an ever evolving situation for the community. There isn't one precise answer on that right now, but we are in constant communication with all those teams and certainly would be able to work on plans to modify that as we get closer to the school year too. So at this time, there's no concrete plan for that, but certainly something we're aware of and we're monitoring should that situation arise," she said.
Another constant concern is the increased traffic in the area around the school. Unruh asked that community members avoid the area to help keep fire operations running smoothly.
"But we do ask if you can avoid that area, that intersection with Highway 50 heading out towards Johnson to avoid that for congestion. There is a lot of heavy equipment being moved in and out of there to and just allow that. If folks need to be getting in and out quickly of the setup at the incident command post, they can do so efficiently. The City of Montrose has done a wonderful job doing traffic alerts with cones, and the reader board signs out that way too, and we're so grateful for that as well. But yet, whatever we can do as community members to just to keep that area less congested would be so helpful."
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KVNF will continue to follow the South Rim Fire on Morning Edition and KVNF Regional Newscast. For more information on the wildfires in our region check out our links here.
