A wind-whipped wildfire that started near Norwood in the San Miguel Canyon corridor of western Colorado grew to more than 3,200 acres Sunday evening as flames moved mostly into parkland and authorities struggled with complex terrain.
The 45- to 60-mph gusts that kicked up Saturday may have sparked the fire by knocking a tree onto a power line, San Miguel County Commissioner Joan May said.
Officials with the Montrose Interagency Fire Management Unit, which is battling the blaze with dozers and more than 180 firefighters, said downed power lines caused the blaze.
There was no estimate on when crews would contain the fast-moving blaze, said Chris Barth, spokesman for the interagency response team.
“This is a particularly complicated fire,” he said. “There’s a lot of diverse terrain — valley bottoms to mesa tops — and there’s a lot of fuel.”
Given the soggy spring, May said, the fire has taken local residents by surprise.
“It’s been a pretty wet spring, but the wind just dried everything out so quickly. Lots of trees are down all over,” May said. “The people in Norwood are just paying attention and on alert.”
Authorities believe the fire started Saturday afternoon near the intersection of Colorado 145 and Goodenough Road, about a mile southeast of Norwood.
Residents in areas bordering the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service property — Wrights Mesa, Iron Springs, Brown Ranch and MacKensie Mesa — have been asked to clear downed trees and dried brush from around their homes. They’ve also been asked to ready their personal belongings and livestock for a possible evacuation.
Along Sanborn Park Road, the three caretakers at the Cascabel private fly- fishing resort spent Saturday night crammed into a camper trailer at the top of Sanborn Hill.
They returned to the property Sunday but are ready to evacuate if the winds change, said Tyler Cramer.
“On top of Sanborn, you could see a huge plume of smoke. It seems to have calmed down a little bit, but it’s really windy,” said Cramer, who brought along the property’s two cats and dog on the brief evacuation. “It was so windy and smoky that we couldn’t let them out.”
While the rising tower of gray smoke is visible from Norwood, no evacuation warnings have been issued there, members of the community said.
The flames soared 300 feet into the air at their highest point. Crews worked through Saturday night and used the morning to set strategy and bulldoze new fire lines, Barth said.
Residents can sign up to receive evacuation notices through the county’s Wireless Emergency Notification System at the county’s website, .
Colorado 145, closed Saturday, was reopened overnight, although the fire is raging on both sides of the main artery to Telluride, said San Miguel County Commissioner Art Goodtimes.
He said air support has been stymied by the high winds, and fire-resistant trees such as willows and cottonwoods are burning.
“It is scary. Because of the winds, it’s been really dry,” Goodtimes said.
Jessica Fender: 303-954-1244 or jfender@denverpost.com
