Firefighters gain on blaze in isolated Jeffco canyons
Jefferson County – Firefighters battled a slow-growing fire in steep canyons west of the metro area Saturday, helped by low wind and mild temperatures that allowed officials to contain the 20-acre blaze set off two days earlier by a lighting strike.
The fire near U.S. 6 west of Golden never threatened homes or structures, said Dan Hatlestad, a spokesman for the Jefferson County Incident Management Team, but the remote location and steep, rocky slopes complicated access and threatened the two teams of 45 firefighters with rock slides and rolling boulders.
Hatlestad said the fire was unlikely to grow past its present size and that unless the weather changed dramatically, mop-up on the blaze would begin today.
DENVER
I-25 “Narrows” ramps to open wide Aug. 22
T-REX officials said all ramps in the “Narrows” portion of Interstate 25 will open Aug. 22, signaling the “substantial completion” of highway elements of the five-year, $1.67 billion project. The Narrows runs from Broadway roughly to University Boulevard.
The T-REX contract called for all the road’s work to be finished by Sept. 1. The southeast light-rail line opens Nov. 17.
T-REX included expansion of I-25 and Interstate 225 and a parallel train line in the highway corridors. The road portion of the project cost about $800 million, and the rail portion slightly more.
SALT LAKE CITY
Dehydration cited in survival-school death
A New Jersey man who died last week after a lengthy hike in Utah while enrolled in a survival school was denied water in extreme heat, his brother said.
Dave Bushow, 29, of River Vale, N.J., died in the rugged Cottonwood Wash area east of Boulder, Utah. It was the first day of a 28-day survival course offered by Colorado-based Boulder Outdoor Survival School.
The group of 12 students and three instructors left a water source at 9 a.m. last Sunday and hiked all day in high temperatures without additional water. The group was several hundred yards from water when Dave Bushow passed out and died about 7:30 p.m.
Dave Bushow did complain of cramps and fatigue, school chief executive Josh Bernstein said, but “there was nothing about his symptoms different than the others. The instructors were assessing him. We know about dehydration. We know about heat exhaustion.”
Survival-school instructors carry water, but don’t tell students. They make it available only in emergencies, Bernstein said.
Rob Bushow said his brother repeatedly told instructors he was thirsty.
It is the school’s first fatality in 18 years, Bernstein said.
DENVER
Police investigating Funky Buddha death
Police are investigating the death of a man outside a popular downtown nightclub early Saturday morning after his head hit the ground in a fight, authorities told 9 News.
The fight occurred about 1:45 a.m. in a parking lot outside the Funky Buddha Lounge near the corner of Eighth Street and Lincoln Avenue. Police, who are investigating the death as a homicide, said the man was struck in the face, hitting his head as he fell to the ground. The victim was taken to Denver Health, where he was pronounced dead.
The Funky Buddha was the site of a shooting in January, when the bar’s co-owner shot a suspected burglar.
GRAND JUNCTION
Man guilty in plot to kill ex-wife, girlfriend
A jury convicted a man of trying to persuade his girlfriend to kill his ex-wife, then trying to hire a hit man from behind bars to kill both.
Stuart Shader, 35, was found guilty Friday of three counts of soliciting to commit first-degree murder and two counts of attempting to commit murder. He faces up to 24 years in prison on each of the five counts when sentenced Sept. 15.
Last year, Shader wanted his then-girlfriend Shawna Nelson, who practiced witchcraft, to sneak into his ex-wife’s house and put pits of the poisonous belladonna plant into a can of ground coffee, according to court records.
Nelson went to authorities and Shader landed in jail. There, he tried to have both of them killed, prosecutors said.
An inmate tipped investigators, so when Shader thought he was hiring a white-supremacist hit man, he was really dealing with an undercover police officer.
DENVER
DeGette radio speech assails stem-cell veto
Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette used the party’s national weekly radio address to declare that President Bush was motivated by “cold, calculated, cynical political gain” when he vetoed a bill that would expand federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research. Bush, in Colorado on Friday for a fundraiser, had long threatened a veto.
“The president’s veto had nothing to do with morals,” said DeGette, of Denver, but instead was “the kind of politics that snuffs out the candle of hope and that condemns the disabled and the sick.”
DeGette and Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., co-sponsored the bill, which would allow federal funds to be used in research on embryos derived from fertility treatments that would otherwise be discarded.
DeGette called Bush’s veto “a sad sidebar in a debate that has been about ethical scientific research and hope.”
COLORADO SPRINGS
City’s job market thriving, expert says
The city’s job market is in its best shape in five years, having benefited from state and national economic recovery and expansion at Fort Carson, according to a state economist.
“The Colorado Springs economy has shifted out of low gear and is growing pretty well right now,” Joe Winter said. “The Springs is benefiting from a statewide recovery in business services.”
Area payrolls set a record for a second straight month, as area employers added 6,500 jobs.
SILVERTON
Body of hiker missing for six days is found
The body of 29-year-old Brent Higgins, missing since July 16 while walking around a campsite at Vestal Lake, was found Friday.
Officials were attempting to recover the body for helicopter evacuation from a 13,000-foot elevation at Wham Ridge below Vestal Peak. The cause of death has not been determined.
Higgins’ wife, Shannon, 30, and son Canyon, 10 months, were waiting for news of him at their camp at the Lake Molas trailhead. About 36 searchers, many of them family members from Colorado and New Mexico, had been combing the area. The final word ended six days of waiting.
Two hikers found Higgins’ damaged camera two days earlier along Wham Ridge. They turned it over to search members about 9 a.m. Friday.
