Understanding the size, speed of the blaze
If you took the 250foot elevator ride up to the viewing platform at Elitch Gardens’ observation tower, the flames from the Spring Creek fire burning in southern Colorado would still rise another 50 feet above your head.
“When a tree torches, you hear that crackle, you see that glow and all of a sudden, like a flame thrower, it will shoot up into the air,” Spring Creek fire information officer Bethany Urban said.
“It is literally like a massive flame thrower.”
And those torched trees can spread a fire fast.
The Spring Creek fire has burned more than 103,000 acres since it started eight days ago. That’s a little bigger than all of Denver (including the airport), and it’s as many acres as all the other wildfires burning in Colorado combined.
Officials know the fire’s destroyed 132 homes and damaged
119 more, but crews haven’t been able to evaluate dozens of neighborhoods yet. Officials know more homes have been lost.
Nearly 1,500 people are working to extinguish the Spring Creek fire, but crews are still struggling to build firebreaks fast enough.
It’s hard to know how fast a fire is moving at any given moment, but we can calculate an average using the daily updates on the number of acres burned.
The fire spread the quickest early on, growing about 25,000 acres during a 26-hour period from June 28 to 29.
On average, it spread 956 acres an hour or 16 acres a minute during that time period.
That means the Spring Creek fire could have burned the entire city of Aspen in a little less than six hours. Washington Park in downtown Denver would have been gone in 10 minutes, and the fire could have cut a path from Denver’s City and County building to Colorado’s capitol dome in less than a minute.
High winds have compounded the problems facing firefighters in Costilla and Huerfano counties. They’re blowing embers more than three-fourths of a mile — sparking spot fires and in some cases negating the hundreds of man hours spent cutting trees and moving dirt to build firebreaks.
The official estimated containment date for the fire is July 31.