A wildfire raging near some of Colorado’s most popular tourist sites grew suddenly more ferocious on Tuesday, forcing 32,000 people from their homes, prompting evacuations from the US Air Force Academy and swallowing numerous houses at the edge of Colorado Springs.
From the vantage point of a command post about 16km from the path of advancing flames, the entire community of Mountain Shadows, a northwest subdivision, appeared to be enveloped in an orange glow after dark.
“This is a fire of epic proportions,” Colorado Springs Fire Chief Rich Brown said as ash drifted down on the city, sirens wailed and the thick smell of smoke permeated the air.
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper flew into the city on Tuesday night by helicopter to meet with fire commanders and tour the fire zone first-hand.
He said that the blaze was one of at least a dozen burning throughout the state. Four people have died in Colorado wildfires so far this year.
“This is the worst fire season in the history of Colorado,” he said during an impromptu news conference, adding that from the air he saw many homes destroyed in a glowing landscape that looked “surreal.”
The Waldo Canyon fire, which has roared through at least 25km2 of dry timber since Saturday, has grabbed attention for days because of its proximity to landmarks like the famed mountaintop of Pikes Peak and the Air Force Academy.
The blaze claimed its first property losses on Tuesday as wind-driven flames swept over containment lines into Colorado’s second-most populous city, consuming an unknown number of homes on the town’s outskirts as authorities hurried to evacuate residents.
El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said 32,000 people had been evacuated, and an Air Force Academy spokesman said the evacuation zone included two communities of single-family homes on academy grounds housing civilian and military personnel and their families.
A mushroom cloud of gray, black and brown smoke, topped by billowing, white cumulus clouds, rose nearly 6,100m into the sky and hung over the area as residents scrambled to heed evacuation orders.
Asked how quickly the fire was spreading after the latest flare-up on Tuesday afternoon, incident commander Rich Harvey said: “If I gave acreage right now, it would be wrong in five minutes. It’s growing.”
Still, the Waldo Canyon fire, burning primarily within the Pike National Forest on the western fringe of Colorado City, was dwarfed in size by wildfires elsewhere across the state, and by a fatal blaze that flared with renewed intensity in Utah.
Authorities said on Tuesday that a body was found in the ashes of the fast-moving Wood Hollow fire about 161km south of Salt Lake City, marking the first fatality in a blaze that has scorched over 158km2 of rolling hills covered by parched cheat grass and sagebrush.
The blaze already has leveled an estimated 30 homes and killed 75 sheep, authorities said.
The Wood Hollow fire is believed to be one of just two western wildfires that have claimed lives in recent weeks.
The other is the High Park fire near Fort Collins, Colorado, south of Denver, which now ranks as that state’s second-largest blaze on record and its most destructive ever, having consumed 353km2 in steep mountain canyons since it was sparked by lightning two weeks ago.
The High Park fire has destroyed 248 homes and killed a 62-year-old grandmother, whose body was found in the ashes of her cabin, while leaving an estimated 4,300 residents displaced by evacuations.
Colorado accounts for several of the 29 large active wildfires being fought throughout the US on Tuesday.
The bulk of them were in seven western states — Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona and California — the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reported.
MONEY GRAB: People were rushing to collect bills scattered on the ground after the plane transporting money crashed, which an official said hindered rescue efforts A cargo plane carrying money on Friday crashed near Bolivia’s capital, damaging about a dozen vehicles on highway, scattering bills on the ground and leaving at least 15 people dead and others injured, an official said. Bolivian Minister of Defense Marcelo Salinas said the Hercules C-130 plane was transporting newly printed Bolivian currency when it “landed and veered off the runway” at an airport in El Alto, a city adjacent to La Paz, before ending up in a nearby field. Firefighters managed to put out the flames that engulfed the aircraft. Fire chief Pavel Tovar said at least 15 people died, but
LIKE FATHER, LIKE DAUGHTER: By showing Ju-ae’s ability to handle a weapon, the photos ‘suggest she is indeed receiving training as a successor,’ an academic said North Korea on Saturday released a rare image of leader Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter firing a rifle at a shooting range, adding to speculation that she is being groomed as his successor. Kim’s daughter, Ju-ae, has long been seen as the next in line to rule the secretive, nuclear-armed state, and took part in a string of recent high-profile outings, including last week’s military parade marking the closing stages of North Korea’s key party congress. Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photo of Ju-ae shooting a rifle at an outdoor shooting range, peering through a rifle scope
South Korea would soon no longer be one of the few countries where Google Maps does not work properly, after its security-conscious government reversed a two-decade stance to approve the export of high-precision map data to overseas servers. The approval was made “on the condition that strict security requirements are met,” the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. Those conditions include blurring military and other sensitive security-related facilities, as well as restricting longitude and latitude coordinates for South Korean territory on products such as Google Maps and Google Earth, it said. The decision is expected to hurt Naver and Kakao
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
RSS