Las Animas County residents raise fire and live-ammunition concerns over Ivy Mass training

About twenty people crowded into the basement of the Trinidad Smokehouse on Main Street to press Fort Carson on one thing above all else: what happens when live ammunition and dry grasslands meet at Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site.

Col. Edwin D. Matthaidess III led the April 22 discussion about Ivy Mass, the month-long training operation tied to the 4th Infantry Division. The Army said the exercise would run on Fort Carson and at the 235,000-acre Piñon Canyon site, with heavy military vehicle movement expected from May 3 through May 7 and roughly 1,400 vehicles moving toward PCMS on routes including Colorado 94, Colorado 71, I-25 and U.S. 350.

The central worry in Trinidad was fire. Residents and local land users wanted to know how the Army would keep live-fire training from sparking a wildfire in a county already watching drought conditions closely. Fort Carson has said its fire team gives commanders daily fire-weather recommendations and can alter or reduce training when conditions warrant. The Army also said it conducts year-round fire mitigation at Fort Carson and PCMS, including prescribed burns and removal of overgrown vegetation and debris.

Those assurances are set against a recent track record that makes the concern harder to dismiss. Military leaders said Fort Carson had 12 wildfires in 2025, and 90% of them were caused by training activities. Even so, Fort Carson said every training-related fire stayed inside a designated impact area and did not threaten life or property. That distinction is likely to matter to ranchers, neighbors and county officials weighing whether the Army’s safeguards are enough for a live-fire exercise at the edge of fire season.

Ivy Mass is not a routine drill. In the Army’s environmental assessment, it is described as a one-time, brigade-level Combined Arms Live-Fire Exercise designed to certify a unit on core warfighting functions and validate next-generation digital command-and-control systems. The assessment also says the 155mm artillery component could be simulated if needed, while maneuver training at PCMS would still go forward. Fort Carson later said the exercise would begin May 1 and would bring noise and dust throughout the day and into the evening.

The larger dispute around PCMS is not limited to one exercise. Fort Carson’s enhanced mission training scoping process for the site ran from Nov. 29, 2025, through Jan. 13, 2026, underscoring how much pressure now sits on the installation and the communities around it. For Las Animas County, the immediate test is whether the Army’s promised fire-weather checks, mitigation work and ability to scale back training hold up once the shooting starts.