By Margaret Ziffer
Fort Riley Public Affairs

A combination of coincidence and preparedness allowed the Fort Riley Fire
Department to transition from classroom training to real-life support of
Barber County, Kansas’ fire suppression efforts March 23 to 27.

What started as routine fire mitigation training in Hutchinson, Kansas,
quickly evolved into something significantly more hands-on.  In the middle
of the week, the training team received a call that a wildfire in Oklahoma
had spread to Kansas.

“I’m pretty sure we were all overwhelmed with what was happening,” said
Shawna Hartman, Kansas Forest Service fire information officer.  “We had a
(social media) hashtag that was ‘FireMitigation2016,’ but we changed it to
‘#TrainingJustGotReal.'”

With the exception of somewhat uncooperative weather and high winds that
prevented scheduled prescribed burns, training went largely as planned early
in the week; however, by Wednesday “it was an unprecedented, historic event
where we had a fire in Kansas that could potentially burn thousands of acres
during a multi-day incident,” Hartman said.  “It was just coincidence that
we were in Hutchinson, an hour and a half away, and already set up in an
incident management structure and could go down there and assist Barber
County.”

The training participants were ready to respond.

“With humidity being at dangerously low levels and the wind being at 50
knots per hour, we knew that if anybody had an issue, they were going to
need help fast,” said Mark Neely, Fort Riley wildland fire manager.  “So we
were prepared.  When you have conditions as dry as it was, with those wind
speeds, it was very difficult to get a handle on that fire.  We were able to
transition our whole team-all our crews and resources-to Medicine Lodge,
(Kansas).”

Neely has participated in the annual training since 2008 and said it’s the
reason Fort Riley and other firefighters were able to support Barber County
so quickly.

“Because the team comes together every year and we work with each other-even though we’re from different agencies and even different states-we know each other because we work on these projects and tasks,” he said.  “We sit on
different work groups and committees for the state, we have a Kansas
Wildland Fire interagency group.  We also have Kansas prescribed fire
groups.  So it’s these partnerships that we’ve formed in these classrooms
and in training that allowed us to come together very quickly, to know the
strengths of each person and to be able to capitalize on that immediately.”

A total of nine Fort Riley firefighters assisted other entities the
remainder of the week, battling the blaze in Barber County.  But there were
many others who helped across the state.

“It’s amazing to see cowboys from all over showing up to help move cattle
around and keep them safe,” Neely said.  “Fence builders showed up to start
rebuilding fences.  We could talk about the fire suppression side of things,
but the awesome community support from across the state that came to provide
all these peripheral items-they were sorely needed and should be considered
a great achievement.  It shows how Kansans will always pull together and
help each other out.”