Destructive Colorado blaze doubles size overnight

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A stub­born and tow­er­ing wild­fire jumped fire­fight­ers’ perime­ter lines in the hills over­look­ing Col­orado Springs, forc­ing fran­tic manda­tory evac­u­a­tion notices for more than 32,000 res­i­dents, includ­ing the U.S. Air Force Acad­emy, and destroy­ing an unknown num­ber of homes.

The blaze dou­bled in size overnight to more than 24 square miles, fire infor­ma­tion offi­cer Rob Dyer­berg said Wednes­day. He said homes were destroyed but author­i­ties don’t yet know how many.

Heavy smoke and ash bil­lowed from the moun­tain foothills west of the city. Bright yel­low and orange flames flared in the night, often sig­nal­ing another home lost to the Waldo Canyon Fire, the No. 1 pri­or­ity for the nation’s firefighters.

Inter­state 25, which runs through Col­orado Springs, was briefly closed to south­bound traf­fic Tuesday.

“It was like look­ing at the worst movie set you could imag­ine,” Gov. John Hick­en­looper said after fly­ing over the 9-square-mile fire late Tues­day. “It’s almost sur­real. You look at that, and it’s like noth­ing I’ve seen before.”

With flames crest­ing a ridge high above its scenic, 28-square-mile cam­pus, the Air Force Acad­emy told more than 2,100 res­i­dents to evac­u­ate 600 households.

A cur­tain of flame and smoke hung above the academy’s Fal­con Sta­dium; bil­low­ing gray clouds formed a back­drop to its alu­minum, glass and steel Cadet Chapel, an icon of the acad­emy. Else­where, police offi­cers direct­ing traf­fic and flee­ing res­i­dents cov­ered their faces with T-shirts and ban­danas to breathe through the smoke.

“Peo­ple are freak­ing out,” Kath­leen Till­man told The Den­ver Post. “You are dri­ving through smoke. It is com­pletely pitch black, and there is tons of ash drop­ping on the road.”

Col­orado Springs Fire Chief Richard Brown told The Post, “This is a firestorm of epic proportions.”

And Hick­en­looper, who spoke with Home­land Secu­rity Sec­re­tary Janet Napoli­tano Tues­day, told anx­ious res­i­dents that “We have all the sup­port of the U.S. gov­ern­ment. We have all the sup­port of the state of Col­orado. And we want every­body here to know that.”

Through­out the inte­rior West, fire­fight­ers have toiled for days in sear­ing, record-setting heat against fires fueled by pro­longed drought. Most, if not all, of Utah, Col­orado, Wyoming and Mon­tana were under red flag warn­ings, mean­ing extreme fire danger.

The fore­cast for the Waldo Canyon fire called for cooler, calmer weather Wednes­day, with a high of 86 and gusts of up to 10 mph.

In cen­tral Utah, author­i­ties found one woman dead Tues­day when they returned to an evac­u­ated area, mark­ing the first casu­alty in a blaze that con­sumed at least two dozen homes. San­pete County sheriff’s offi­cials said they hadn’t iden­ti­fied the vic­tim, whose remains were found dur­ing a dam­age assess­ment of the 60-square-mile Wood Hol­low Fire near Indianola.

The nation is expe­ri­enc­ing “a super-heated spike on top of a decades-long warm­ing trend,” said Derek Arndt, head of cli­mate mon­i­tor­ing at the National Cli­matic Data Cen­ter in Asheville, N.C.

The Waldo Canyon fire, which started Sat­ur­day, was 5 per­cent con­tained before 65-mph wind gusts sent it surg­ing toward Col­orado Springs as it cov­ered 10 square miles. The cause was under investigation.

To the north in Boul­der County, offi­cials evac­u­ated 26 house­holds when a wild­fire erupted Tues­day after­noon fol­low­ing a light­ning storm. No struc­tures were imme­di­ately threat­ened, but the National Cen­ter for Atmos­pheric Research, perched on a hill­top in front of Boulder’s famous Flatirons foothills, closed as a precaution.

And in north­ern Col­orado, the 136-square-mile High Park Fire has destroyed 257 homes, author­i­ties said. That fire was trig­gered by light­ning June 9.

Hick­en­looper insisted Col­orado was open to tourism, say­ing Colorado’s fires had affected just about a half-percent of all of the state’s pub­lic lands and per­haps 400 of its 10,000 camp­ground sites.

In Utah, offi­cials said the Wood Hol­low Fire was 15 per­cent con­tained. High winds forced author­i­ties to shut down part of U.S. 89 near Indi­anola, and evac­u­a­tions were called for Fairview, a town of about 1,100 residents.

Else­where in the West:

- A fire that charred nearly 70 square miles west of Rui­doso, N.M., was 90 per­cent con­tained, with many res­i­dents allowed to return home.

- A wild­fire north of Helena, Mont., destroyed four homes and forced addi­tional evac­u­a­tions. Gov. Brian Schweitzer issued a state of emer­gency for four counties.

- A wild­fire in the Bridger-Teton National For­est grew from about 300 acres to 2,000 acres Tues­day, mark­ing the first major wild­fire of the sea­son in west­ern Wyoming.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jun 27 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.