Wetmore – Surging afternoon winds triggered 200-foot flames and billowing plumes of black smoke Saturday as the Mason Gulch fire 25 miles west of Pueblo spread to 2,400 acres.
Fire officials said it could take weeks to fully contain the lightning-sparked wildfire that forced the evacuation of 110 homes, including 60 late Saturday. The fire was only 5 percent contained.
So far, there have been no injuries from the fire, and no buildings have been damaged.
“It’s making another march,” safety officer Tom Hudson said Saturday, pointing to a heavily forested mountaintop in the distance as it exploded with flames.
Hudson stood alongside the only dirt road into the heart of Mason Gulch, where the ground firefighters have only one escape route. Ominous thunderclouds crept in overhead as helicopters dropped buckets of water into valleys thick with smoke.
“In this area, you get squirrelly winds off these small thunderstorms,” said information officer Brian Scott. “But we’re building line every day.”
Local, state and federal emergency crews converged in Custer County to battle the erratic fire, which was burning in a steep, hard-to-access gulch in the mountains.
Emergency aircraft, including four single-engine air tankers, three heavy air tankers, one sky crane and two smaller helicopters, battled the blaze from above, dropping fire retardant throughout the day. Thirty firetrucks and almost 300 people fought the flames on the ground.
Authorities said that Pueblo is fully restocked with fire retardant – slurry – for the planes after running out Friday.
Greg Sullivan, a Custer County official, said he was in the process of filling out an application for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“This is going to cost a lot,” he said.
About 5:15 p.m. Saturday, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Department issued an evacuation order for about 60 homes located west of Siloam Road and residents of the Vaughn and Savage subdivisions. About 50 homes had been evacuated early Friday.
Local rancher Bill Donley, who owns more than 7,000 acres in the area, said he and his wife watched the blaze come up over the ridge behind their ranch Friday night.
“It looked real bad,” he said Saturday, from his ranch near the south side of the fire.
Donley was patrolling his land on his all-terrain vehicle as a sky crane helicopter dropped thousands of gallons of water from a nearby creek over pasture he leased from the U.S. Forest Service for his cattle.
“We thought the heifers were acting funny before we moved them,” Donley said.
The fourth-generation rancher said he was no longer scared of the fire, but his wife still was nervous.
“We have everything loaded up and ready to go,” he said.
Authorities sent out a reverse 911 call with a recording and went door to door to alert homeowners in the Greenwood subdivision of an evacuation about 3 a.m. Friday.
“Nobody really panicked,” Forest Service information officer Steve Segin said.
A local ranch offered to house evacuated residents, but community members were able to find other places to stay. Many stayed at hotels in Florence, about 12 miles away.
Some Greenwood residents lingered.
Barbara Hoehn said members of her family did not leave right away and took their time packing important papers and photographs before heading to a hotel Friday.
“This is our pleasure,” she said, “living in God’s country.”
The family finally evacuated, but not without its three dogs, two cats, a lizard and a hamster. Other nearby communities on the east and south sides of the fire have been alerted that an evacuation is possible if fire conditions worsen.
Staff writer Abbe Smith can be reached at 303-820-1201.
