LARIMER COUNTY, Colo. — The largest wildfire in the state's history prompted first responders to become more efficient and more effective. Now, there's a team of officers and deputies in Larimer County who step in during natural disasters.
TheLarimer County Regional All-Hazards Crisis Response team is comprised of 26 law enforcement officers from across the county. Some are patrol deputies, and others are police officers. Each member has received special weapons and tactics training and, upon joining the AHCR team, wildland fire training.
Most recently, the AHCR team responded to Buckhorn Canyon when flash floods tragically killed two people.
Since the team was finalized in the spring of 2021, its members have been tasked with responding to similar natural disasters across the Front Range.
Lt. Ian Stewart of the Larimer County Sheriff's Office said the concept for a team of law enforcement officers who could also become certified wildland firefighters was first conceived about ten years ago.
"During the Hyde Park Fire when the fire would run over during the middle of the night we asked, 'Who can we call? Who can get there fast?'" Stewart said. "We learned baptism by fire, 'Call the SWAT team out'."
Fast forward to 2020, a bona fide team of specialized, firefighting LEOs still hadn't been created, but the desire remained.
Sgt. Josiah Thieman, a patrol deputy of the operations division at the LCSO, has extensive SWAT training, but during the Cameron Peak fire, he realized he needed a fire-specific skillset.
"The hard part was we didn't have the training, so we weren't Red Card [wildland firefighter] certified," Thieman said. "We didn't understand fire behavior and so there was a lot of times that our evacuation teams — that were law enforcement officers or deputies — would get in difficult situations, you know, logs would fall across the road while the fires come in, and we would get above our heads pretty quickly."
Now, as a member of the AHCR team, Thieman and his teammates are certified wildland firefighters who use their law enforcement training in tandem to respond quicker or provide armed protection — useful qualifications during a natural disaster, according to Stewart.
"I think we could be one of the first teams like this in the state," he said. "This method could be beneficial for other Front Range counties. Wildland firefighters are the most amazing people. and, hopefully, the AHCR team can help them along the way."
"The size-up of the fire we can share to the [career] firefighters has been a massive takeaway for us," Thiemann added. "From the law enforcement side of things... because we get there first, so we can figure out how to evacuate appropriately and what kind of response is going to be needed from our firefighters."
The AHCR team is funded through money previously allocated to the LCSO. Its members are LSCO deputies, police officers from Timnath, Estes Park and Colorado State University police departments.
The team's operations are an "enhanced" continuation of the evacuation efforts Larimer County LEOs had already been doing, according to Justin Whitsell, the emergency operations director of the LCSO.
"During the Cameron Peak fire, there were homes in the Poudre Canyon where the AHCR team came and helped us," he said.
The team was only in its initial stages at the time, but Whitsell said its efforts spared several homes.
"It's pretty awesome to see something like this, and I've worked across the country fighting fires and I've never seen anything like it," Whitsell said. "A team where law enforcement and firefighters work side-by-side and do similar jobs or the same job to protect the community. It's huge for us to have it here in Larimer County, where we're very prone to disasters. It's nice to have additional folks who are trained and willing to jump in."
Applications to join AHCR open once a year during the spring.