Wind gusts of more than 60 mph ripped down a power line in southern Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes National Park & Preserve on Wednesday afternoon, and sparks ignited grasses and sagebrush.
The wind-whipped wildfire grew to 100 acres in an hour, but in another four hours, local firefighters had brought it under control.
Colorado’s peak wildfire season starts this month, and while eastern Colorado’s moist spring has kept conditions relatively safe, the Western Slope has spent parts of most weeks under “red flag warning.”
The National Weather Service issues red flags when wind, lightning and dry plants create explosive potential.
“Overall, we’re calling for an average fire season – but average doesn’t mean no fires,” said Jen Chase, spokeswoman with the Rocky Mountain Regional Coordination Center.
Wildfire consumes about 100,000 acres in the state during an “average” year, Chase said.
Changing conditions
Even in the green Front Range, experts said, wildfire risk could rise significantly with a few weeks of dry weather, as often happens in mid- to late June.
“Big fire years are always associated with dry summers, and the biggest fire years have come when a dry summer follows a wet period,” said Bill Romme, a fire ecologist and professor at Colorado State University.
It’s a matter of fuel. Healthy grasses and new tree growth mean more food for flames, Romme said.
“Look back in the tree rings, and you see that pattern extending back hundreds of years,” he said. “If we have a dry summer, the stage is set for very large fires.”
It was relatively wet in 1999 in parts of Colorado, northern Arizona and New Mexico, Romme said.
“That grew a lot of grasses and other fine material,” he said, “and then it all dried out in 2000.”
Wildfire scorched more than 170,000 acres in Colorado that year.
In 2000, the Hi Meadow fire raced so close to the home of Hugh and Nancy Grove, outside of Conifer, the couple believed their house had burned down.
“We were getting ready to start all over,” Nancy Grove said.
Their home survived, but just two years later, the Hayman fire raged nearby, and the Groves and their neighbors spent two weeks poised to evacuate on a moment’s notice, Grove said.
After Hayman, the Groves joined a federal and state program to reduce the risk to their home and lives.
With $6,500 of their own and about as much in grants, the couple trimmed about 100 trees from their 10-acre property, “enough for four years of firewood,” Hugh Grove said.
Three factors contribute to keeping this season’s wildfire risk in Colorado at average – despite the moist spring, said Jennifer Smith, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
“There’s been an early green-up, so we have abundant fine fuels – dead grasses, pine needles, that kind of thing,” Smith said. “There’s expected warm, dry conditions.
“And there’s the bug kill.”
Standing dead trees killed by beetles in Colorado’s mountains can spread fire quickly, Smith said.
Mountain dwellers across the state have fretted about the fire risk, but CSU’s Romme said the conventional wisdom linking beetles and fire doesn’t hold up scientifically.
“That does not mean fire is not a concern in beetle-kill area,” Romme said.
The lodgepole pine communities hit by beetles, he said, tend to grow in environments where it’s usually too wet to burn in the summer.
Air tanker on contract
When it’s hot and dry, however, Romme said, any trees can carry intense, crowning fires, even those not hit by beetles.
The Rocky Mountain Regional Coordination Center has already put one of the state’s four single-engine air tankers on contract.
The planes are critical tools for responding quickly to wildfire, Chase said.
That tanker is currently in Fort Collins, Chase said. The federal Bureau of Land Management has a second plane in Grand Junction. Two others await assignment.
“We’ll initiate those contracts when conditions make it necessary,” Chase said. “We’re not there yet.”
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-954-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
