After a cool late spring, Colorado is heating up – and fire managers are paying attention. Last week, lightning started 10 fires in one day in the Pike National Forest.
Residual moisture from the spring prevented the fires from spreading beyond a few acres, but with a week of 90-degree weather in the forecast, officials say Colorado residents can’t afford to be complacent.
“This has been a very good season so far,” said Larry Helmerick, a fire information officer with the Rocky Mountain Area Coordination Center. “But we’re drying out quickly.”
Today, fire forecasters are watching the Mesa Verde area, the Uncompahgre Plateau, the Gunnison basin, the San Juans and northwestern Colorado, where hot weather is turning green grass to tinder.
On Sunday, “red flag” warnings were posted along the Interstate 70 corridor from Grand Junction to Glenwood Springs below 7,000 feet – an unwelcome seasonal milestone for firefighters and mountain residents in a state scarred by a string of major blazes in the past decade.
Wind is the force that turns fires into blazes, but humans are the major cause of fires, responsible for two-thirds of the state’s fires each year, officials say.
So far this year in Colorado, 128 fires have been started by people and 66 by lightning. The number of starts and the 1,629 acres burned are below normal. A short string of hot, windy days could turn that around, forest officials say.
Along the Front Range, blazes sparked by abandoned campfires – like the Buffalo Creek and Bobcat Gulch fires – have cost $50 million in suppression and rehabilitation in the past decade alone, said Ted Moore, forest fire management officer for the Pike-San Isabel National Forest.
Rangers continue to put out 10 to 15 campfires a week, according to Barb Timock, spokeswoman for the Pike-San Isabel National Forest.
“We tell people to put out the fire first, then pack your car, and then come back and put it out again,” Timock said. “If it’s not cool enough to put your hand over it, dump your ice chest on it.”
The National Wildland Fire Outlook, a joint report by several federal agencies released June 10, predicted normal fire potential for Colorado.
That could change if there are no summer monsoons, according to Helmerick.
Colorado averages about 2,300 fires and about 55,000 acres burned annually. The fire season normally begins in late spring and peaks from July Fourth through September.
In 2002, 4,600 fires burned 619,000 acres and 380 homes. Fire suppression and rehabilitation cost more than $200 million. Nine firefighters were killed, and more than 80,000 people were evacuated at some point.
Staff writer Theo Stein can be reached at 303-820-1657 or tstein@denverpost.com.
