PM UPDATE FROM DENVERPOST.COM
Beulah Valley residents forced from their homes by the Mason fire will be allowed to return at 4 p.m., authorities announced this afternoon.
Nearly 5,000 residents were evacuated Sunday when the Mason fire, sparked by lightning on July 6, quadrupled in size and marched six miles to the outskirts of the town of Beulah.
About 100 residents of Greenwood returned to their homes Monday night.
Florence – Firefighters fought aggressively against the Mason fire on Tuesday, capitalizing on a second straight day of fortuitous weather.
“We are trying to take advantage of it,” information officer Brian Scott said. “We want to make sure that if the wind comes up (today) … the fire won’t pick up again.”
Higher temperatures and drier conditions are predicted for today, so firefighters used Tuesday as a window of opportunity. By the end of the day, containment of the 12,200-acre fire was at 40 percent.
The last reports had put the size at 11,700 acres, but spokesman Justin Dombrowski said the growth was largely due to a slope firefighters let burn Monday night.
More than 800 people, seven air tankers, 10 helicopters, 56 fire engines and three bulldozers fought to gain the additional 10 percent of containment since Monday.
Twelve hotshot crews worked to back-burn some areas, and hand crews monitored smoldering debris in hopes of putting down the blaze before the weather shifted.
“We have to remember that this fire started with a lightning strike, and we still have many fires burning that size (in the area) right now,” Dombrowski said. “We have to be careful that this doesn’t get up and move.”
Thousands of people remained evacuated from their homes in the areas around the town of Beulah – a nod to the unpredictably of wildfire.
An evacuation order for the town of Greenwood was lifted Monday night, but Pueblo County Sheriff Dan Corsentino said Beulah residents would have to wait at least until tonight before they could return to their homes.
“The heat of the fire continues to be significant,” Corsentino said Tuesday night. “People are anxious. They want to see about their homes … but we have to make sure it is safe.”
Incident commander Jim Krugman said no one knows for sure how many people evacuated.
“It tends to be like a schoolhouse fire drill,” he said. “No one gets a head count.”
He said firefighters are working with the Sheriff’s Department to help residents eventually return to the tree-lined hills east of Pueblo, but he said the final decision was up to Corsentino.
“The last thing we want to do is let people back in there and then have to evacuate them again,” Krugman said.
Krugman is part of the Type I fire team that took over Tuesday. The federal Type I teams bring more equipment and more-experienced crews to the scene.
Official estimates are that about 900 homes and more than 1,000 structures are threatened. No structures have been lost.
Battling the fire has cost about $2.6 million.
Steve Segin, a U.S. Forest Service information officer, said several areas where crews had previously conducted controlled burns and thinned forests impeded the fire after it quadrupled in size and ran 6 miles Sunday.
“We identified this area as a potential problem years ago,” Segin said as he surveyed the smoldering ridgeline above the Vaughn subdivision near Beulah.
That wasn’t lost on Vic Voss. He spent the past six years building his dream home and wasn’t about to evacuate. He said he was thankful for the foresight.
“They’ve talked about that area for years,” Voss said.
Even as Voss planned to defend his home on his own, a crew was standing guard on the deck of a nearby home close to the fire.
“We’re basically in charge of this neighborhood,” said Elliot Smith, a firefighter with Boulder Mountain Fire Authority. “We’ve kind of taken up on this house because it is the closest.”
He said the day had been “pretty lax” because of solid work from air crews and the favorable weather.
Phil Bowden, a firefighter from Eagle, was working Tuesday on the Billington Ranch as a division supervisor. He said weather conditions across the state are “headed to being really bad” in relation to fire danger.
Denver Post staff writer Erin Emery and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 720-929-0893 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
