Fire now largest in Colorado history
High winds fuel explosive growth to 158,300 acres
Wind gusts as high as 76 mph fueled explosive growth of the Cameron Peak fire west of Fort Collins on Wednesday, helping push the 2- month- old wildfire across nearly 23,000 new acres and making it the largest in Colorado’s recorded history.
The wildfire, which ignited Aug. 13 and survived more than a foot of early September snowfall, grew to 158,300 acres, or about 247 square miles, on Wednesday, firefighting officials reported in an evening briefing.
The fire remained 56% contained, sending towers of smoke billowing over Fort Collins and much of the northern Front Range throughout the day.
Wednesday’s growth led to new mandatory evacuation orders in the Larimer County foothills, affecting mainly recreational properties — including hundreds of mountain cabins — in and around the communities of Glen Haven and Drake east of Rocky Mountain National Park.
“It was a bad day,” Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith said at the evening briefing, “but it very easily could have been a lot worse.”
Smith acknowledged that “we lost structures today” but said officials don’t yet have a count. No injuries or deaths were reported, he added.
The Cameron Peak fire previously had damaged or destroyed 95 buildings, including 33 homes, according to authorities.
The fire’s growth Wednesday pushed it from No. 3 on the list of Colorado’s largest wildfires straight to No. 1, surging past 2002’ s Hayman fire, which burned 137,760 acres, and this summer’s Pine Gulch fire, which scorched 139,007 acres on the Western Slope north of Grand Junction.
This year’s spate of giant wildfires across Colorado comes as record temperatures, low relative humidity and statewide drought combined to fuel fire growth — part of a 20- year cycle of aridity that’s led to more expansive wildfires, including all 10 of the largest fires in the state’s recorded history.
On Wednesday, sustained winds above 50 mph drove the Cameron Peak fire east and south, with flames bursting through huge strands of lodgepole pine and massive amounts of beetle- kill pine trees.
“It’s been relentless, driven by winds and burning through beetle kill,” said Cass Cairns, a public information officer with the Cameron Peak firefighting efforts. Overnight and for much of the day Wednesday the fire raced through a huge section of the Arapahoe and Roosevelt National Forest.
The rapidly spreading fire forced mandatory evacuations in the communities of Glen Haven, Glen Haven Retreat, Storm Mountain and Palisade Mountain, according to the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office. Additional mandatory evacuations were ordered in the afternoon for the Bobcat Ridge Natural Area, Horsetooth Mountain Park, Overhill Drive, Milner Mountain, Lory State Park and Masonville.
Masonville is about 15 miles southwest of Fort Collins, and other evacuated areas are also in the foothills west of city.
Smoke filled the skies around the fire for much of the day Wednesday, creating an orange glow at time and casting darkness at other times. In Fort Collins, brown particulate- laden smoke spilled into the city Wednesday morning as the
fire spread, worrying residents.
“We had a huge wildfire in Brazil, too,” said Colorado State University graduate student Renan Casagrande, 32, from São Paulo. “Way bigger than here. We know temperatures are going higher. … I don’t know what we are going to do.”
Casagrande checked on horses at CSU’s Mountain Campus in the late afternoon as winds shifted.
“It feels bad. Nobody likes to breathe smoke. This morning, it was terrifying. You smell the smoke; it is sad that everything is burning.”
The extremely strong and steady winds, overnight and into the day, kept firefighting aircraft on the ground for safety considerations, Cairns said. One plane with infrared sensing technology, used to map the massive fire, did take off. On the southeast side of the fire, near the CSU Mountain Campus, the fire has pushed east about 5 to 10 miles, driven by strong winds.
The fire crossed Pingree Park Road into the Buckhorn drainage heading toward Stove Prairie.
“Buckhorn road is a main area the fire has followed along,” said Wayne Patterson, a fire information officer with the Cameron Peak firefighting effort. “There’s a lot of old lodgepole pine and a lot of old pine beetle kill in the area.”
Winds, tinderbox forest conditions and extremely dry weather combined to fuel the fire Wednesday.
“It’s unusual that this is happening in October,” Patterson said. “We are usually not as dry as we are now.”
Relative humidity in the fire area has been in the teens or lower for about a two- week consecutive period, with a one- day break, and the extreme weather pattern is taking a toll.
“There are lots of big logs out there that will serve as a source for the fire for a long time yet, until we get an awful lot of moisture,” Patterson said.
The extremely active fire is now also atop Signal Peak, northwest of Glen Haven.
On Wednesday, power was turned off, as a safety precaution, to customers of Estes Park Power and Communications “from the top of the switchbacks through Glen Haven and down CR 43,” according to Estes Park officials.
Strong winds and relative low humidity are back in the forecast on Thursday afternoon through Saturday. Temperatures will be close to seasonal norms on Friday with a gradual warm- up through the weekend. A cool front is expected to arrive next week.