Crews battling numerous fires across Colorado

Crews battling numerous fires across Colorado

July 5, 2001

Journal and Wire reports

Firefighters toiled in 90-degree heat against dozens of fires in northwest Colorado on Wednesday, as crews investigated several reports of small burns along the Front Range.

Locally, firefighters were working on two small fires on BM land west of U.S. Highway 666 while allowing a low-intensity burn to put itself out on the San Juan National Forest.

Don Geesling, fire-management officer with the Mancos-Dolores Ranger District and BLM’s San Juan Resource Area, said Wednesday that a lightning strike had ignited a blaze north of Dolores.

It was on top of the canyon rim due west of the forks of the West Fork on the Dolores River, he said, and was only a quarter-acre in size.

Because the forest there was moist and the fire very low-level, crews were allowing it to smolder in order to remove some built-up fuels in the forest, he said.

"Wherever we can, we try to let natural fire do its natural work, it’s natural clean-up," he sai. "But if the dangers are just too much and unacceptable, we just put the fire out."

That was the case for three fires that started Tuesday, one on national-forest land and two on BLM land, he said.

Crews had extinguished the first small blaze and two engine crews were working Wednesday morning to monitor the two on BLM land, both lightning-strike-caused and confined to very small areas.

"We do have a helicopter doing bucket drops," he said. The blazes were expected to be extinguished by early Wednseday afternoon.

Smokejumpers had to abandon their work fighting a blaze in the Black Mountain Wilderness Study Area east of Rangely because of extreme fire behavior, the Craig Interagency Dispatch Center said in a news release.

The Broken Track Fire, 11 miles east of Rangely, had burned about 250 acres by Wednesday morning. Like most of the fires in the area, it was believed to have been started by a lightning strike.

Elite Hot Shot fire crews were called in to work a fire south of the Broken Track Fire. That blaze, dubbed the Shoulder Fire, covered about 20 acres. The Hot Shots worked in concert with planes dropping retardant and water.

Fire reconnaissance teams also checked numerous reports of small fires along the heavily populated slopes of the Front Range south of Denver. Crews were waiting for temperatures to rise before deciding which fires to target first, U.S. Forest Service spokesman Dave Steinke said.

Colorado has seen hot, dry weather for several days, and forecasts predicted little change through the weekend.

Also Wednesday, firefighters reported having a 3,000-acre fire in the Army-owned Piñon Canyon military training ground under control.

Fort Carson spokesman Ron Joy said the fire was 80 percent contained and the 32-man fire crew had been reduced by half. Joy said rainfall Tuesday night helped subdue the blaze.