Denver metro and Colorado Springs fire department personnel gathered in Aurora Tuesday for a training on fighting urban wildfire hosted by Aurora Fire Rescue, running drills in an Aurora neighborhood simulating a real urban fire.

The training provided strategic and tactical training in fighting urban wildfires, which will play a big role in protecting Colorado’s urban communities from fires like the 2021 Marshall fire and recent Maui fires.

These fires have shown that the line separating urban, suburban and rural communities has blurred, Travis Pulliam, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters union representing Aurora Fire Rescue, said.

“As evidenced by the devastation of the Marshall Fire in late 2021 and the recent Maui fires, wildfires are not just threats for rural areas and forest lands,” Pulliam said. “This course is equipping representatives from five Colorado fire departments to become subject-matter experts to teach best practices in fighting urban wildfires to their crews.”

Trainings like the one Tuesday are important in ensuring various fire departments are speaking the same language and operating efficiently with each other, since it takes more than a single department to respond to big wildfires, Colorado Springs Fire Battalion Chief Justin White said.

“By training together, we make it infinitely better for everybody,” White said. “It’s been a great pleasure to work with all the folks here. They provide us the opportunity to practice this at real speed using real houses so when we show up on emergencies, it’s not the first time we’ve done that.”

The training program was developed by the International Association of Fire Fighters in 2016 and is spread across the country, hoping to build an industry standard, according to an Aurora Fire Rescue news release.

Aurora mayor Mike Coffman said he hears a lot of concerns about the dangers of urban wildfires, so trainings like these are important for the fire crews and to the residents who see the training happening.

“It’s a relief for the folks down here in the city of Aurora to see this joint training exercise, knowing that at some point … we can have an effective response,” Coffman said.

Firefighters and company officers from five Colorado departments joined the training, with 24 total participants from Aurora Fire Rescue, Colorado Springs Fire, Denver Fire, South Adams County Fire Department and South Metro Fire Rescue.

The crews ran drills that mimicked real wildland fire scenarios, pulling up to houses in an Aurora neighborhood and reacting to various fire situations given to them on signs. Drills happened in real time, with firefighters running between homes and engaging hoses as if the drills were real-life scenarios.

“Aurora Fire Rescue is grateful to have the opportunity to host this important course for the Front Range in responding to wildland urban interface events,” Aurora Fire Rescue operations commander Jon Hill said. “The mission of AFR’s wildland team is to combat wildland and urban interface fires that threaten natural resources, communities and property.”