New helicopter could help Colorado fight fires at night

DENVER — Fighting fires comes with risk. Fighting fires from the sky at night is a calculated risk.

“Obviously it adds more risk and complexity to it, so we only do it in certain situations when we have a really high amount of values at risk,” said Vaughn Jones, chief of Wildland Fire Management for the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control.

Colorado knows the risk of fighting wildfires at night from the sky. A pilot died in 2021 trying to be the first to use a plane to battle a wildfire in the dark. The state isn’t ready to try that again, but they…