{"id":103533,"date":"2017-09-15T16:31:45","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T22:31:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fire-district-covers-dispatch-new-station-chiefs-evaluation\/"},"modified":"2017-09-15T16:31:45","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T22:31:45","slug":"fire-district-covers-dispatch-new-station-chiefs-evaluation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fire-district-covers-dispatch-new-station-chiefs-evaluation\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire district covers dispatch, new station, chief\u2019s evaluation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Cortez
Cortez Fire Protection District board members discuss a finance question raised by board member Sherri Wright.<\/span>Emily Rice\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Cortez Fire Protection District dispatched three firefighters to wildfires north of Grand Junction last week.<\/p>\n

The firefighters are on a 21-day dispatch and headed to South Dakota to fight wildfires in the area, Fire Chief Jeff Vandevoorde said during the district board\u2019s meeting on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had three firefighters in our new brush truck go outside of Grand Junction for call-outs,\u201d Vandevoorde said. \u201cThey were there for seven days and were getting ready to be released and were asked to go to South Dakota.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dispatched firefighters \u2013 Lt. Mike Cabell, Mike McCoach and Matt Fudala \u2013 were consulted on the extended appointment before it was approved.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe talked to them and they are doing good,\u201d Vandevoorde said. \u201cThey were the last crew to be released, and usually that is a compliment when they keep them that long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cabell and McCoach are certified engine bosses, which allows them to man the brush trucks.<\/p>\n

All three dispatched firefighters are traveling to South Dakota to fight a fire that had scorched 1,100 acres of land by Wednesday night.<\/p>\n

The board discussed the construction of the new fire department with project manager Kyle Blackmer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have got one slab placed on the south end, we should have structural steal installed on Monday on the south end. So we are going vertical, which is a big step,\u201d Blackmer said. \u201cThings are starting to go the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Blackmer, the project is slated to be completed in May 2018.<\/p>\n

The building is part of the new building\u2019s training area on North Washington Street.<\/p>\n

The department has not decided what will be done with the old station. It may be used for storage or sold, according to Vandevoorde.<\/p>\n

The board also discussed Vandevoorde\u2019s evaluation, which was based on a variety of areas. The board concluded that he was meeting or exceeding expectations.<\/p>\n

Assistant fire chief Shawn Bittle announced that the department will graduate a class at Dolores Station No. 3 on Sept. 30 at 3 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe recruit class is back here in Cortez to finish out their last month. They are doing great, their class average is 97 percent,\u201d Bittle said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

board discusses station construction, dispatched firefighters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-103533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103533"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=103533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}