In the Colorado town of Nederland, there is still visible rubble and debris from the fire at the Caribou Village Shopping Center. Now, the community is looking towards the future and preventing disasters like this, and the fire department is getting a new upgrade.
The early October blaze wiped out half of one of the main hubs of activity in the town, destroying a laundromat, brewery and doctor’s office, among other businesses. But fortunately for those who live in Nederland, the fire was relatively self-contained to the shopping center, not hopping into neighborhoods or catching other houses on fire.
“When a day like that happens, the adrenaline flows, we go as fast as we safely can,” Nederland Fire Protection District Lieutenant Scott Papich told CBS Colorado.
The department’s work was able to keep the blaze contained to the businesses on the south end of the shopping center, which was a total loss. As the community rebuilds, they got to celebrate a momentous day with Nederland Fire on Sunday.
“This is the community’s engine,” said Papich, referring to the brand new fire engine unveiled in a special ceremony at the District’s main station. It replaces a 27-year-old predecessor and will help the rural community of Nederland most of all.
“You have to have a truck that can move around in the coldest, snowiest, iciest months of the year,” said Papich. “This truck has really high lift, it’s four wheel drive, it’s got a short wheel base, it’s a shorter wheel base than any of our other engines.”
That means an engine that can maneuver on tight roads, high slopes and adverse weather. While those changes can seem small on the surface, those small margins matter whenever disaster strikes.
While Papich admitted there are certain fire situations, such as the high wind days that powered events like the Marshall Fire, where there’s only so much that can be done, he said that engines like this are able to potentially turn the tide in a firefight.
“This is made for everything that we’re gonna run into here,” he explained. “Not 80-mile-an-hour winds, but if we get another structure fire like the one a few weeks ago, that’s what this was built for.”
