Colorado wildfire destroys between 80 and 100 homes
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By Keith Coffman
DENVER | Wed Jun 12, 2013 3:32pm EDT
(Reuters) - A wind-whipped Colorado wildfire burned between 80 and 100 homes in a wooded subdivision just outside of the state's second largest city on Wednesday, as another blaze shut a top tourist attraction and forced the evacuation of more than 900 inmates from a prison in a neighboring county.
A fast-moving blaze was raging uncontrolled about 15 miles northeast of Colorado Springs, and could soon threaten even more homes if winds increase as expected on Wednesday afternoon, El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa told reporters.
The blaze, which ignited on Tuesday and quickly ripped through Colorado's Black Forest, comes as firefighters in other parts of the U.S. West have grappled with an early and intense start to the wildfire season, particularly in California.
"It's a very hot, very active, difficult fire" said Dave Rose, spokesman for El Paso County, where the fire is burning.
"Unfortunately, the wind's starting to pick back up again, and so the wind will blow the fire back into areas that are still rich with fuel" in the form of trees, he said.
Maketa said the fire quickly reached a residential community, where it razed between 80 and 100 homes and an unknown number of outbuildings less than a year after another massive blaze destroyed hundreds of homes in the Colorado Springs region.
Evacuation notices went out to 2,600 homes housing 7,300 people, Maketa said. Army National Guard troops have been deployed to help police prevent looting. Maketa said the fire was estimated to cover an area of 7,500 acres to 8,000 acres.
Firefighters have been unable to create any containment lines around the blaze, Maketa said. Explosions, possibly from residential propane tanks, have been heard in some places, he said. No injuries have been reported.
Nearly 200 firefighters are handling the Black Forest Fire, Rose said.
Maketa compared the blaze to Colorado's most destructive wildfire, the so-called Waldo Canyon Fire last June, which killed two local residents and reduced about 350 homes to ashes. More than 30,000 people in the area had been under mandatory evacuation orders during that fire.
EXCEPTIONAL DROUGHT CONDITIONS
As the flames spread near Colorado Springs, a separate fire in neighboring Fremont County also broke out on Tuesday quickly spread to 3,800 acres and prompted the evacuation of the Royal Gorge Bridge & Park, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said in a statement.
That came as the U.S. Drought Monitor says that nearly 16 percent of Colorado suffers from "exceptional" drought conditions - the most severe rating possible - while over 26 percent of the state is in the "extreme" category.
The Royal Gorge span, which is billed as the world's highest suspension bridge, stretches nearly 1,000 feet above the Arkansas River for a quarter-mile and is one of Colorado's most visible tourist destinations.
The bridge itself was not threatened by the flames but fire managers said the river was closed to rafting. Investigators were seeking the cause of both fires.
That blaze also prompted the evacuation of 905 prisoners overnight from the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility in Canon City to other prisons as a precautionary measure, said state corrections spokeswoman Alison Morgan.
She said the fire had not reached the prison, which houses many inmates with mental health and other medical needs including wheelchairs.
In northern Colorado, a lightning-sparked wildfire that erupted on Monday in Rocky Mountain National Park has burned about 400 acres and was spreading. No structures are immediately threatened by that blaze.
The U.S. Forest Service said on Wednesday it was mobilizing two C-130 military aircraft, each capable of dropping up to 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of retardant on flames, to assist in putting out the Colorado fires.
The National Weather Service said single-digit humidity values and temperatures in the upper 90s Fahrenheit (upper 30s Celsius), combined with wind gusts in excess of 40 miles an hour have created "very high to extreme fire danger" in Colorado for most of the week.
(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins and Laura Zuckerman; Writing by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by James Dalgleish, Cynthia Johnston and Carol Bishopric)
