Officials in Conejos County say firefighters used more than 1 million gallons of water to douse an apartment building fire on Wednesday that took roughly 10 hours to extinguish and displaced 19.
Authorities say fierce winds in La Jara — a town of about 800 people roughly 20 miles from the New Mexico state line — hampered efforts to extinguish leaping flames.
“The town system was able to handle a little bit of it,” said Rodney King, the county’s emergency manager. “They had drained the pressure down. They were drafting water out of irrigation canals.”
The overwhelming need for water also drained pressure from the Conejos County Hospital for a few hours, Kind said.
One fireman was injured and treated for minor injuries while fighting the blaze.
The fire consumed the two-story building holding 12 apartments, a garage, a laundromat and a closed business. Residents in the area were evacuated because of the heavy black smoke that poured from the blaze.
“With the wind we got going, all we can see is big old clouds of black smoke,” Rebecca Gutierrez told The Denver Post on Wednesday in a phone interview as wind chimes sang loudly in the background.
Photos from the scene showed firefighters scrambling to send water onto the building through an area where the roof had collapsed. One image showed an apocalyptic black plume of smoke shooting into the air.
U.S. 285 was closed for most of the day while crews battled the fire.
, an Alamosa-based newspaper, said the fire was burning in the The Morrison Apartments. Mayor Larry Zaragoza said nine families in the building were displaced.
Lodging has been provided for those displaced by the blaze.
Officials say the cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com or twitter.com/JesseAPaul
