ALAMOSA – As Colorado continues to be one of the most wildland fire hazardous states, the Colorado Wildland Fire & Incident Management Academy (CWFIMA) continued on Monday with 16 classes at Adams State University in Alamosa.

More than 250 wildland firefighters and disaster managers have come to Alamosa to learn and share the specific skills needed to manage future fires and other disasters throughout the week. The academy was scheduled for June 3-9 in Alamosa.

Incident Commander Jim Krugman noted, “Continuous improvement—through training—is key to the culture of the wildland firefighting community. This year’s academy will offer opportunities to learn from past emergency events difficulties and achievements.”

The academy’s mission is to “Promote safety and integrate the efforts of local, state, federal, tribal, private-sector, and non-governmental emergency response organizations by utilizing the Incident Command System and facilitating a national approach to domestic incident management by providing both the cognitive and hands-on incident management knowledge, instructed by the nation’s brightest authorities.”

A wide range of classes will prepare students to manage wildland fires and other emergency incidents. The students attending this week’s academy range from brand new firefighters to seasoned emergency management personnel.

This event marks the 24th anniversary of the academy, which has come a long way since it began in 1994 as a small interagency training event with five classes in Black Forest. The summer academy now has 19 partners and 29 classes. As CWFIMA has expanded to embrace all-hazards incident management, it has consistently exceeded national standards for training, quality and safety.

The future of successful emergency management depends on new emergency responders building a foundation from those experienced emergency responders who have ‘seen it and done it,’ and for seasoned personnel to learn new techniques and technology being used by the upcoming generation of emergency responders.