About Rifle Interagency Helitack
The Rifle Interagency Helitack Crew is funded as a 10 person crew, 5 positions
being BLM, the other 5 Forest Service. The crew is based in Rifle, Colorado
at the Garfield County Regional Airport. Located in the Central
Zone of
the Upper Colorado River Interagency Fire Management
Unit, the crew is
a unit resource and provides initial attack and support of large fires
throughout the unit which stretches from the Utah border to the Continental
Divide and encompasses the White River National Forest, the Grand Junction
and Glenwood Springs Field Offices of the BLM, the Colorado National Monument
and parts of the Grand Mesa-Uncompahgre-Gunnison National Forest. Other
resources based in Central Zone include a national Type 1 helicopter, a
SEAT Reload Base, three Type 6 engines and a 5-person initial attack squad.
We contract a light helicopter for a 90 day contract which starts on
June 1st, but often gets extended depending on local and national fire
activity. We usually stay busy on the local unit with initial attack
through June and July, and generally end up going off-unit to support
large fires or provide initial attack when the monsoons hit. This is
usually in late July or early August, but if the monsoons are light are
don’t show up, we may stay on-unit for the entire contract period.
There is usually fuels work outside of fire season, which can include
cutting and thinning projects, pile burning and prescribed fire implementation.
Our emphasis is initial attack, and when we’re on the home
unit, this is what we do almost exclusively. We also support on-unit
extended attack fires, and provide firefighters and overhead off the
crew for these incidents to the furthest extent possible while still
maintaining initial attack readiness. We do what we can to get crewmembers
out on assignments and training opportunities such as single resource
assignments, hot shot crew details and Type 2 crew assignments, among
others. These opportunities are usually somewhat limited during June
and July as we are normally busy with IA, but become more likely as the
season progresses, especially if the helicopter ends up off-unit on a
large fire assignment.
