PINON CANYON MANEUVER SITE, Colo.—Light winds were again expected to help firefighters battling a 42,000-acre wildfire on Saturday.
Lightning is believed to have started the fire last Sunday on the Army’s Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. It spread to surrounding ranch land as well as state and federal land later in the week.
Several federal fire teams were fighting the fire along with personnel from the Army and the Colorado National Guard.
“With the resources we have fighting the fire today and the forecast light winds, we hope to make excellent progress,” Mike Gaylord, operations section chief for the Rocky Mountain Type II incident management team, said in a statement.
Temperatures were expected to reach the mid-80s in the area, with winds of up to 10 miles per hour. On Sunday, the National Weather Service said there’s a 10 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms in the afternoon.
For the past two years, the Army has been trying to nearly triple the size of Fort Carson’s maneuver site, from 368 square miles to more than 1,000 square miles. It’s a move that has been fiercely opposed by most ranchers in the area. Some of them say the wildfire highlights problems with the way the Army operates the site.
Las Animas County Commissioner Gary Hill said the fire wouldn’t have spread so quickly if the Army had allowed cattle to graze on the current 238,000-acre site.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to have ranchers paying grazing fees to the government to let their cattle on the land, instead of taxpayers having to pay firefighters to put out a wildfire?” asked Hill, whose ranch is in the Army’s expansion area.
Lon Robertson, a rancher leading one of the groups opposed to the expansion, said the fire would have been stopped sooner if it had started on private land. He said expanding the land the Army controls and allowing live-fire exercises on it would increase the risk of wildfires that could again spread to surrounding ranches.
Fort Carson spokeswoman Doraine McNutt disagreed with the claim that the Army isn’t prepared to fight fires at Pinon Canyon.
“We have firefighting personnel at Pinon Canyon and they began fighting the fire when lightning started it on Sunday,” she said. “They were able to put out a second fire that was also caused by lightning.”
The ranchers’ opposition to Pinon Canyon’s expansion has won the attention of Colorado’s congressional delegation, which has taken steps to slow down the proposal or get more information about it. They include a one-year moratorium on spending on the expansion which expires Sept. 30.
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Information from: The Pueblo Chieftain,
