PUEBLO — The Pueblo Fire Department may be getting help preventing wildfires from an unlikely source: prison inmates.
The Colorado Department of Corrections has an inmate wildland fire team.
Under a proposal being considered by City Council, members of that team would be used to help with fire mitigation projects in Pueblo.
The fire chief says increasing mitigation efforts is important because Pueblo has averaged about 50 wildfires per year, for the past five years.
"This is important to keep the community safe, and with our part in this we want to do as much as we can to keep everyone safer but if everyone had defensible spaces that would help too."
About 100 acres near Fountain Creek and the Arkansas River have been identified for mitigation work by the team starting next year if City Council signs off on the plan.
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