Eastern El Paso County blizzard comms

[dw2872]

I know there are a lot of blizzard incidents/calls for northern Colorado so those probably warrant their own thread but wanted to start a thread for the El Paso County rescue calls flooding in for people that feel the need to venture out into blizzard conditions with barely any gas in their tanks, not dressed for weather, kids in their cars, driving through snow-banks bigger than them, and then leaving their cars on foot and getting lost. That should cover all the calls...

The EPSO Tactical Dispatch Unit was put into service to handle these calls on EP C4 (TG-4942) and his call sign is Zebra-79 (RID 416385).

County snowcats to the rescue out on Hwy-24 near Ellicott and even I-25 north of Colo Springs (for the FDs that don't have them).

 

[dw2872]

Hearing dispatchers on EP C4 talking to each other using their first names. Jay is Z79/TDU/OEM and Angela and Jocelyn are working EPSO Red main fire dispatch.

Sounds like TDU doesn't have access to all of CAD. No access to "active CAD" but instead only one side of CAD. They need to set something better up at OEM. He cannot even clear calls out that units have already taken care of.

 

[dw2872]

And AMR Ch-2 (TG-4896) in use for those eastern El Paso County operations.

 

[natedawg1604]

It's like this all over the Denver Metro area. I cannot fathom why so many people thought it was a good idea to go out driving today..??! Apparently, a lot of people cannot conceive of the possibility of NOT DRIVING because they MUST get somewhere, regardless of road conditions.

So, they blindly pack the kids in the car and go on their merry way, until suddenly they "unexpectedly" get stranded in a ditch on the side of a highway, and call their magical AAA line only to learn the tow truck coming to the rescue has a 3-hour ETA, and no law enforcement agency is coming at all because everyone's on accident alert...

 

[kv6o]

Well, some of us had to go to work today! Down in the Springs proper, it's just windy and wet.

Other parts of the County are seeing some pretty bad condx, zero visibility and hundreds and hundreds of stranded vehicles.

Steve
KV6O

 

[natedawg1604]

Well, some of us had to go to work today! Down in the Springs proper, it's just windy and wet.

Other parts of the County are seeing some pretty bad condx, zero visibility and hundreds and hundreds of stranded vehicles.

Steve
KV6O

Yeah, I get it. Luckily they closed my office today. I'm sure a lot of those people in stranded vehicles "had" to get to work...

 

[natedawg1604]

Latest post on DSCO's twitter page:

Please, please, stay home. The roads are bad. DCSO currently has 84 calls pending for stranded motorist asking to be rescued.

 

[kv6o]

The other part to this equation is the forecasts. Usually, the weather forecasts are for much worse conditions than actual materialize, if they call for 6-8" of snow, count on 3-4". My experience is you can usually cut the forecast in half. So, folks factor this in.

In this case, as of last night they were calling for a "few" inches in the Monument area (2-4"), with some wind. The impact was going to be in the Monument area, and a rough commute. They DID NOT predict the store was going to be this magnitude, not by a long shot.

I am pretty sure if the forecasts were accurate for places like Calhan, folks would have stayed home because everything would have been closed.

Steve
KV6O

 

[natedawg1604]

The other part to this equation is the forecasts. Usually, the weather forecasts are for much worse conditions than actual materialize, if they call for 6-8" of snow, count on 3-4". My experience is you can usually cut the forecast in half. So, folks factor this in.

In this case, as of last night they were calling for a "few" inches in the Monument area (2-4"), with some wind. The impact was going to be in the Monument area, and a rough commute. They DID NOT predict the store was going to be this magnitude, not by a long shot.

I am pretty sure if the forecasts were accurate for places like Calhan, folks would have stayed home because everything would have been closed.

Steve
KV6O

I agree with you about the forecast issue. However, when you look outside your house and there's a huge blizzard with no visibility, isn't that a small clue?

 

[dw2872]

Well, some of us had to go to work today! Down in the Springs proper, it's just windy and wet.

Other parts of the County are seeing some pretty bad condx, zero visibility and hundreds and hundreds of stranded vehicles.

Steve
KV6O

Yep. I am only hearing about carloads of families driving around and getting stuck with little to no gas in their tanks. The people going to or coming from work are a smarter than that.

 

[dw2872]

East county FDs working the hundreds of stranded motorists on EP C3. The same units are calling EP C4 "the Task Force channel".

 

[dw2872]

Two of these were sent to Monument in El Paso County (and also 1 sent to Bennett and 1 to Ft Morgan) to help stranded motorists.

Heavy snow in Colorado brings out National Guard crew > National Guard > Article View

 

[dw2872]

For the Colorado National Guard operations, I heard MATES-502 callsign talking to State OEM-5 on MAC-21 (Statewide MAC channel) saying they were at Pine Creek High School getting ready to head out to save some stranded motorists.

MATES is "Maneuver Area Training Equipment Site" personnel related to SUSV ops (SnowCat type Army transport vehicles talked about in the post above).

Then I heard OEM-5 and OEM-15 talking about the units heading to Watkins but they were not on the air on MAC-21 yet.

OEM-5 later told the MATES units to switch to MAC-10 (SE Colo MAC channel) to coordinate with El Paso County.

It also looked like MAC-10 and El Paso County C2 were patched but might not have been patched in the normal way they usually do patching on DTRS.

There was plenty of interesting comms on EP C2, MAC-10, and MAC-21 on this operation.

MAC-21 is definitely one to keep an ear on next time a big event happens.

 

[radio]

It was something else to hear all the activity on all those talk groups.

Thank you to all those involved during those incidences. Outstanding job!

Snow and wind wasn't bad enough but then the winds changed causing the up slope condition.

Here we go again for this weekend snow storm on the way. Under Winter Storm Watch already!