PUEBLO, CO…The US Forest Service and the Middle Arkansas Wildfire Prevention Partners (MAWPP) are pleased to announce the upcoming Southern Colorado Wildfire Prevention Workshop on April 28th and 29th, 2006. The workshop will be held at the Quality Inn and Suites at 3075 East Hwy 50, Cañon City.

The first day of the workshop is geared towards fire professionals with a firefighter training course that focuses on recognizing the point-of-origin of a wildfire and taking the appropriate measures to protect it. Protecting the point-of-origin is important to the success of determining the actual cause of a fire. The hope is to create a greater awareness of human caused fires within the firefighting community.

The second day of the workshop is featuring the Nebraska Partners in Prevention. The partners are a high energy group of volunteers that will be offering sessions like Prevention on a Shoestring, which showcases wildfire prevention efforts done with minimal cost. The target audience are smaller fire departments and homeowner association representatives who typically find it difficult to get fire prevention messages into their communities. Difficulties are often tied to budget matters. “Fire prevention is everyone’s responsibility,” said Ralph Bellah, US Forest Service Fire Prevention Officer and MAWPP member. “This workshop will be good to attend if you have any concern about fire prevention in your area, plus you’ll learn methods of getting fire prevention messages out that most of us have never heard of.”

BLM and Forest Service officials are closely monitoring current fire conditions. According to Forest Service Fuels Technician Dennis Page, “current conditions are similar in some areas, if not worse, than this same time period in 2002 when Colorado experienced a severe fire season. A wildfire under these circumstances can spread rapidly and have devastating results in our forests and possibliy our communities and homes. Consequently, fire prevention receives a greater emphasis during these conditions.”

Representatives from the Bureau of Land Management, and the Pike & San Isabel National Forests, are encouraging everyone to attend this workshop. For more information about the workshop please contact Fire Prevention Technician, Gregg Goodland in the US Forest Service office in Cañon City at 719-269-8543.