By Savannah Eller
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
BLACK FOREST, Colo. — The Black Forest Fire Rescue Protection District has placed its chief on administrative leave following accusations made by staff.
Citing “organizational leadership and cultural challenges” addressed in letters sent to the district board of directors at the end of June, the board placed Fire Chief PJ Langmaid on administrative leave July 1. The suspension has since been extended indefinitely pending investigation into the chief’s conduct.
The board has discussed the allegations at several special meetings over the past month, all in executive sessions closed to the public. According to the board’s meeting minutes, a “letter of no confidence” was sent to the board from staff members.
The board has also considered suspending other leadership at the district employing 30 full-time firefighters, including Deputy Chief Chris Piepenburg and Training Captain Michael Torres. At the July 1 meeting the board voted to restrict command staff to “nothing except operational needs,” suspending their ability to make policy decisions, change schedules, or hire and fire employees of the district.
Board member Jim Abendschan said at a July 6 meeting that the two leaders were involved in the issues plaguing the district.
Black Forest looks to move ahead after year of disaster, divisiveness
It’s been a tumultuous 12 months for the Black Forest Fire and Rescue District. After battling the most destructive wildfire in the state’s history, the district’s board spent the year of recovery embroiled in controversy with residents and the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. “I’ve never seen, in the 22 years I’ve lived here, such animosity and divisiveness as I’ve seen in the last year,” said former board chairman Eddie Bracken, who was voted out in last month’s board elections. While on the board he received a petition to remove Fire Chief Bob Harvey, a petition to keep him on, allegations of malfeasance, a costly internal investigation and a hostile election that unseated him and two other incumbent board members.
“If we leave Chief Piepenburg and Captain Torres in their positions, the culture is untenable, the grapevine is alive and well and not a healthy environment,” he said, according to the meeting minutes. “We have a qualified administrative officer that can keep the ball running and Captains who are qualified to run calls.”
A motion to suspend Piepenburg and Torres died, as did a motion to fire Langmaid outright in a 2-2 vote with one board member excused. In the meeting, the board “deemed the actions committed by Chief Langmaid to be terminable.”
The lack of leadership has prompted “operational support” from the Colorado Springs Fire Department, said CSFD Spokesperson Ashley Franco. She said that CSFD was providing a battalion chief for supervision on complex and multi-company incidents, and would continue to do so until the situation was resolved.
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In an email statement, Black Forest Fire Rescue Board of Directors Chairman Nate Dowden said that the district continues to provide fire and EMS services “uninterrupted:"
“The city will be assisting in calls that Chiefs were tagged to under our mutual aid agreements and the Board has further authorized the use of appointed individual(s) to be temporarily available to provide day-to-day leadership presence pending completion of its investigation.”
He then wrote that the district was in discussion with the CSFD “to accept a limited, short-term appointment” of an “interim operational fire chief” from the Colorado Springs agency while the investigation into Langmaid continues.
Monument Fire District chief Andy Kovacs said that his neighboring agency had not received any formal requests for assistance from Black Forest Fire Rescue.
“Even in light of circumstances over there, it’s business as usual for the two agencies,” he said.
He said mutual aid calls route through the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office dispatch and that the neighboring agencies were still in the operating smoothly when it came to multi-agency calls or ambulance requests.
The recently-inaugurated joint firefighter training program between Monument, Black Forest Fire Rescue and Pikes Peak State College may be up in the air after the successful graduation of its first batch of recruits this year. Kovacs said that he hoped issues at Black Forest, where the training program was physically run, would be resolved by the time another class would start in January.
In the meantime, Langmaid is under investigation for issues at the district as well as an allegation about the board’s emails. On July 6 the board voted to employ IT to “provide forensic analysis of the potential unauthorized access of Chief Langmaid to Director Dowden’s, Chief Piepenburg’s and Captain Torres’s email,” according to the minutes.
Langmaid’s own email has been taken over by Administrative Officer Rachel Dunn .
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The board retained the law firm Cockrel Ela Glesne Greher and Ruhland out of Denver to conduct what is intended to be a “360 degree” investigation, according to to board member Jack Hinton .
Langmaid previously served on the Black Forest Fire Rescue board of directors before taking on the role of chief in 2019. He lost his house in the 2013 Black Forest fire.
Langmaid was a firefighter with the Colorado Springs Fire Department for 15 years, according to Gazette news partner KOAA. He had not held a leadership rank with a firefighting agency before becoming chief.
Langmaid could not be reached for comment.
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