At least 112 homes burned in the first days of the High Park fire, making the still very active blaze west of Fort Collins the most devastating loss of property to fire in northern Colorado, Larimer County sheriff’s executive officer Nick Christensen said this week.
“I knew this was a big, big fire,” Christen sen said. “I was hopeful it was going to be a lower number. But it’s not, and it’s going to grow.”
Structure-assessment crews continued their work inside the bounds of the fire that started June 9 with a lightning strike in Paradise Park.
Christensen said the homes were lost early in the fire. “Structure protection came after life safety, so we lost a lot of homes in the first few days of the fire,” he said. “The last few days, structure protection has been successful. We have not lost additional homes.”
The homes lost include one each in the Soldier Canyon, Cloudy Pass and Picnic Rock neighborhoods; five in Pine Acres; 21 in Stratton Park; 17 in Poudre Canyon; three in Spring Valley; one on Old Flowers Road; one on Missile Silo Road; 40 in Whale Rock; 12 in Paradise Park; two in Tip Top; and seven in Rist Canyon.
“These are stories,” Christensen said of the tally. “Every one represents a family who has lost their home.”
He said several firefighters and an employee of the Sheriff’s Office lost their homes.
Assessment crews will be working in Lawrence Creek, Redstone Canyon, Buckhorn, Stove Prairie and other Rist Canyon neighborhoods today, he said.
At 54,230 acres, the High Park fire now is the third-largest in recorded Colorado history behind the devastating Hayman fire at 137,760 acres and Missionary Ridge, at 71,739 acres. Both occurred during the drought of 2002.
In terms of homes burned, High Park is so far the third-most-destructive, behind 2010’s Fourmile Canyon fire, which burned 169 west of Boulder, and Hayman, which burned 133 west of Colorado Springs.
As of Thursday night, the cost of fighting the fire was $7.2 million. It is 20 percent contained.
About 1,400 firefighters were battling the fire Friday, concentrating resources on the north and west flanks to protect homes. Much of their work was was focused on a 200-acre fire north of the Cache La Poudre River, burning on Sheep Mountain near the Glacier View Meadows neighborhood.
About 195 firefighters and heavy helicopters were trying to contain the fire, which was sparked by wind-driven embers Thursday afternoon.
“That is a great concentration of expertise, experience and resources,” incident command spokesman Brett Haberstick said. “The six crews are highly trained, very proficient and highly consistent.”
If unchecked, the spot fire could gain momentum and make a run at Glacier View, Hahnenberg said.
“We’re working hard on the spot fire across the Poudre Canyon,” Hahnenberg said. “Mother Nature is being very difficult.”
Dave Lipson, a fire-weather meteorologist assigned to the High Park effort, said winds from a brief thunderstorm Friday fed the blaze, much more than the brief shower dampened it.
Storms are expected to move out Sunday, leaving “another hurdle for us to jump” on Monday and Tuesday, with dry weather and wind gusts up to 50 mph, he said.
High humidity is expected Wednesday and Thursday to help the fight, he said.
The terrain near the Glacier View spot fire is extreme, with many steep pitches and gullies. Fire fuels are abundant, including large patches of beetle-killed timber.
Meanwhile, the eastern flank of the fire, closest to the city of Fort Collins, is “in really good shape,” Hahnenberg said.
Around the county, people evacuated from the fire zone and people worried for their friends rallied to try to make their community feel a little better and to say thanks to the firefighters helping them.
At the Bellvue Bean, a coffee shop inside the fire zone, Susan Lewis of Laporte handed over platters of homemade cookies to proprietor Darren Wurtzberg late Friday afternoon.
She and her friends — including one whose home is threatened by the High Park fire — spent all day baking.
Barred from handing the baked goods to the fire crews, Lewis took them to the coffee shop, which has become a gathering place for locals, crews and evacuees.
She’s one of many residents showing support for crews, even as they anxiously wait for news. The highly traveled road to the press briefing area is marked with homemade signs lauding them as heroes.
“I just wish there was something we could really do,” Lewis said.
Friday afternoon, dozens of people converged on Old Town Square in Fort Collins for a rain-dance flash mob.
“It’s been such a sad and scary week, then, why not,” Colorado State University student Jennifer Moore said as she bounced to the beat of bongo drums. “Sometimes fun is the best answer to worry.”
