Black Forest fire rages in Colorado, stirring up awful memories

[Baclava]

Source: L.A. Times

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The wind-whipped Black Forest fire continued to burn out of control Wednesday night, devouring thousands of brittle acres, destroying nearly 100 homes and forcing as many as 9,500 people to flee, some leaving with only the clothes on their backs.

"We are throwing everything at it we can," a weary-sounding Terry Maketa, El Paso County sheriff, said at a late-afternoon news conference. As he spoke, air tankers circled overhead and smoke stung eyes and throats as far away as suburban Denver.

"How in the world can this happen two years in a row? What is going on?" asked John Riesberg, a real estate agent who has friends in the Black Forest fire's path. He had been working his cellphone all day to make sure they got out safely.

On Wednesday, officials feared that the Black Forest fire would burn as many as 12,000 acres before the day was over. So far, 92 houses were considered a total loss and five were partially burned in and around Black Forest, a postcard-pretty area of homes tucked amid dense ponderosa pines about 13 miles northeast of Colorado Springs. Maketa said he expected the number of houses lost to rise.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-colorado-fires-20130613,0,4858989.story

[backscatter712]

1. At last count on Denver Post, 92 homes destroyed.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_23442660/black-forest-fire-challenges-evacuees-suppression-efforts

[svpadgham]

2. I bet there wouldn't be this negative press coverage...

if it was a WHITE forest fire.

[trailmonkee]

3. it's about 20 miles away from me... I took these pics yesterday:

I was driving in from Colorado Springs... I usually take hwy 83... but that was closed:







Last night my neighborhood was filled with smoke.... everyone had to come inside... even folks without asthma, etc, were having a hard time.

[Baclava]

4. Stay safe! I hope all is well!

scary stuff



?itok=d0FwAdzh

[OnlinePoker]

13. Just found this thread

The middle picture is from the Yellowstone Fire in 1988. It was my desktop background for a long time.

[Sunlei]

6. good pictures, bad to have yearly fires. what has changed as far as grass cover and tree denseness?

In your pictures I see fairly tall green grass right next to the road (it would get a bit more water due to runoff from rain) but then back out I see dry tallish brown grass and small scattered trees.

Is that brown grass 'cheat grass'? invasive grass that is very green in spring, wildlife like horses, deer eat it up when it's green. But cheatgrass uncropped by grazers, goes very dry (seeds) right after spring and is major fire tinder.

[Baclava]

10. sorry - I don't know grasses - Botony was never my forte

Insects will rule the world in the end , you know

[Mr. David]

5. I'm 60 miles north of the Black Forest fire...

and yesterday it was extremely hazy and smoky....

[kaiden]

7. 360 homes now destroyed.

[politicat]

8. Oh, Mr. Riesberg, there is a simple explanation. You just won't like it.

25 years ago, El Paso County's board of supervisors and the Springs' City Council got taken over by the extreme right wing, who set about gutting public services, including brush management and local forestry services. This came at the tail end of 80 years of Federal Forestry policy that insisted on putting out every fire.

About twenty years ago, pine bark beetles exploded out of their former ecological niche. They're a native invasive species, because there are too many trees per acre. Before the Forestry policy, regular small fires would burn out the brush and dead or dying trees, and control the beetle population. They're like a virus in an immunocompromised body -- without the defense of fire, the forests have no way to contain the beetle infestation. Neither the county, nor the state nor the Feds could find the money to inoculate the trees in the path of the infestation, and by the time the agencies involved finally heard the ecologists who had been telling them the disease was becoming terminal, it was too late.

And the county board of supervisors and city council allowed any development, regardless of fire danger. But the county didn't fund fire abatement, and 5 years ago, the Colorado Springs City Council found themselves nearly broke because their tax policies are based on neoconservative ideology rather than best practices. So they stopped doing fire abatement and public education. Which allowed for more brush to build up.

These fires are the result of generations of bad policy and short-term thinking. The sad thing is that these fires will continue to burn, because we have a century worth of forest fires that must be paid for.

[Baclava]

11. good point - and Mr Developer knows that he can sell property with surrounding towering trees

for a hefty profit the deeper they dig in the forests

those woods are only supposed to burn every decade, or so, yaknow

edit - or so they say

[SCVDem]

9. We in So. Cal. just had our first big one

and the season is just starting.

Ask a Repub how that sequester is working out when the air assets are grounded due to their miserable petty politics of austerity, which were debunked, btw.

We should be outfitting damn near every drop capable aircraft to attack this REAL threat to the homeland. (I hate that word)

I don't think the wildlife can run fast enough or the fish swim far enough to save themselves from this.

All I can say is to be prepared to get out. Close can get too close in an hour or less.

Stay safe and keep your pets close.

[necso]

12. I use the Forest Service's (processed) Modis data {2 large images in body}

for large fires. (Be sure to use the maps on a scale (for me about 40%) that allows you to separate actual data from fire names (also in red).)

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/activefiremaps.php

You can save the images* and from a series of images get an idea of fire progression.

*: As in: on the following page you could move your mouse-pointer over the "JPEG Image" link; right click and select the "Save Link As" or similar option. (Be sure to note the directory the file will be saved in.)

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/activefiremaps.php?sensor=modis&op=maps&rCode=rmw

Or you could just click on the "JPEG Image" link on the page; right click on it (or image following) once it's loaded and select the "Save Image As" or similar option.



Here's the recent (june) archive of maps:

http://activefiremaps.fs.fed.us/activefiremaps.php?op=archive&rCode=rmw&sensor=modis

And here's the comparable map for yesterday: