Pike & San Isabel National Forests
Cimarron & Comanche National Grasslands

USDA Forest Service
Pike & San Isabel
National Forests
Cimarron & Comanche
National Grasslands
2840 Kachina Drive
Pueblo, CO 81008
719-553-1400

Telephone for the
Hearing Impaired
719-553-1404

Introduction:

This web-link has been created in response to requests from teachers for some Hayman Fire specific instructional opportunities, during the month of October and National Fire Prevention Week.  We have provided this teaching-link from the Hayman Web-site as an emergency solution because of the immediacy of the time-factor. This is by no-means an end product, but a journey.  This information will grow, and sections found not as useful will be deleted, while others will remain, and new can be added in response to need.  Please make suggestions and add your comments and requests at the address provided at the end of the exercises. Contributors are welcome. 

A Note to the Teacher:

On June 8, 2002 Smokey Bear’s worst nightmare occurred.  We all knew it would eventually happen, we just didn’t know how or when.  Educators from federal, state, local and private agencies, have been talking about the importance of fire prevention, and the importance of prescribed burns in fire regenerative or fire resistant ecosystems for a long time now, as well as the urgency of fire-mitigation within the wildland and urban interface. Perhaps you were one of those educators.  I know I was.

So then, was all our teaching for nothing?  Or, rather instead, does it take an event such as the Hayman fire in order to help people listen.  You as a teacher know that you can’t teach when no one is listening.  Today is the quintessential “teachable moment” in fire-ecology on the Front-Range.  Yes, we will have our questions, debates and differences, for instance, about natural fire regimens, or pre Euro-settlement conditions and other things.  And yes, some people still won’t listen.  But the bottom-line is we’re all in this together.

Links:

National Fire Prevention Association Home:
http://www.nfpa.org