Kirk C. Watkins, Lefthand Fire Department. The Lefthand Fire Protection District (LHFPD) is undergoing a long-needed transformation. The old trailers and pole barns are being replaced by upgraded, multi-use facilities that will allow the fire and emergency response units in the area to achieve a level of functionality previously hampered by their timeworn facilities. After the 2020 fire season, it became clear that the fire response personnel that we have protecting our communities have their work cut out for them. The nearly all volunteer force at the local jurisdictions responds to fires and other emergency calls throughout the year, day and night, and depend on community support to be well-trained and capable. To that end, the LHFPD officially broke ground on the new Station 1 building February 9, 2021, located at 900 Lefthand Canyon Drive. 

According to David Lindquist, training officer for the LHFPD, “The new station will house firefighters, staff, a community and training room and large apparatus bays for our fleet and is expected to be finished by November 2021. This station replaces the original pole barn and trailer that has served the Lefthand Canyon and the North Foothills corridor for the last 50 years. 

Chris O’Brien, the newly appointed fire chief for the LHFPD talked about the project, “I’m grateful, frankly, that we’re able to do this. We’ve been working for this for a long time,” he said. If you look at our current situation, we can barely house four apparatus and we worked out of a construction tent.”

With the new building, O’Brien looks forward to being more capable to respond to emergencies, like the extreme fires that had swept through Colorado and Boulder County last year.

“To be able to house firefighters overnight and having them available for overnight response is going to be terrific,” he said, saying that currently “they all respond from home.”

Some of the other advantages of having a center for emergency responders to operate out of will be immediately evident. 

“They’ll be working with training. They’ll be doing community training projects. We do a lot of mitigation and we do a lot of wildland firefighting nationally, so having those folks available all the time, ready to roll, is going to be a huge benefit, not only for us but for our partners,” he explained. “We work pretty closely with the forest service, (and) the county. We’ve got a great relationship with them as well evidenced by the Cal-Wood fire.”

He concluded, saying “this is going to give us so much flexibility and so many more opportunities for our folks and our communities. We’re looking forward to to it. It’s going to decrease our response time and having really good training facilities onsite to do more with more folks is going to really give us an opportunity to grow.”

For the forty-four volunteers already committed to responding, the new facilities and training that is planned promises to be a game-changer for the department, and for the community depending on their skills and training.

Austin Blood, the president of the board of directors for LHFPD echoed the gratitude and anticipation that was palpable in the air as he spoke about the effort that had taken place to get the project underway. “It’s been a team effort. We’ve had a lot of people working on it for a long time,” he said, “I think we started four or five years ago, saving our pennies and arranging a little financing, and working with state. It’s been a long push by a lot of people, to get where we are.”

When asked about the timeframe for getting the building up and running, Blood said “311 days, that’s what the contract says,” he continued, saying “The preliminary plan is to hopefully have the station up, have heat in it, and hopefully we’ll have a community event in December.”

He pointed at the previous facilities, a line of old trailers, sheds, and small buildings way past their prime. 

“This thing over there is a mid-fifties or sixties double wide trailer that has long reached the end of its useful life,” he said, “and the boys and girls deserve a lot better. And the community deserves it, so we’re going to have a nice community room right here. And we’re going to be able to have community events and all of that. It’s going to be quite an improvement, well into the future.” 

David Lindquist will be overseeing much of the future training programs. He talked about some of the advantages of having such an improved facility. “This station will have an actual classroom space. Right now, we’re doing everything on Zoom because of COVID, but when it comes back to having a face-to-face classroom, not field exercises, but stuff that has to (be) done there, we’ll have a place for more than one agency,” he said. 

Since LHFPD contributes to the training of numerous local and national agencies, the facilities expanded space and location promises to be a huge advantage for the critical training and development of highly skilled responders. 

“We can do joint training in the classroom, we can do medical, CPR.” 

They also plan to develop mitigation teams. “We have a mitigation crew that works most of the year. They’re off for a few of the winter months,” he said, “I think last year we had five on it. They do projects for homeowners, they do grant work. We’ll get grants through the forest service and other stakeholders, do work for them, and they go out on fires with the hand crew.”

After the latest devastating summer fire season, Boulder County just experienced, the reality of having well trained and well supported firefighters and response personnel operating out of the new facility, is something for the surrounding communities to take comfort in. 

(Originally published in the February 25, 2021, edition of The Mountain-Ear.)