Just past the entrance to the Paradise Acres neighborhood in Huerfano County on Sunday, a cluster of trees burned and two Chinook helicopters took turns dumping water on the flames.
Vickie Russo, a spokeswoman for the team managing the Spring Creek fire, pointed to a communications tower on a ridge above the fire.
“Thatap pretty important for 911 services in the area,” Russo said. “This work is to protect that.”
The Spring Creek fire burned through Paradise Acres and other neighborhoods in Huerfano and Costilla counties over the past week. It burned through a space thatap slightly larger than the City and County of Denver and destroyed more than 130 homes.
It seemed unstoppable for the first few days, growing by thousands of acres every couple of hours. Then it rained, and fire crews could dig lines and clear land to contain the fire. Containment passed 50 percent Sunday.
Officials have re-opened U.S. Highway 160 and allowed some people in neighborhoods untouched by the fire to return home.
But hundreds of homeowners — including those who lived in Paradise Acres — are still waiting to hear if they have a house to go home to.
Itap frustrating and confusing for folks who no longer see giant, gray plumes of smoke billowing into the sky.
Division supervisor trainee Amy McClave, who is in charge of monitoring an area near Walsenberg, gets why people are antsy to go home.
The problem with letting people return is that she’s still seeing something called hot spots spark across the landscape.
Hot spots are “green pockets of fuel that didn’t burn initially,” McClave said.
A fire doesn’t burn everything in its path. Itap normal to see streaks of green peppered throughout the blackened landscape. Those pockets of trees, shrubs and grasses can still burn if an ember catches — especially when the weather is hot, dry and windy.
Hot spots can flare up for months after the wildfire it technically “out.” Trees hold onto heat for a long time. It all depends on how much rain and snow falls in the coming months, McClave said.
Large wildland fires have even been known to survive the winter.
Homeowners won’t have to wait until there’s no risk of hot spots to go home. At a certain point the fire commanders and county officials will decide itap safe enough.
The people who live south of the fire’s northwest corner, however, are still waiting on containment.
Fire Behavior Analyst Shelly Crook said the terrain in that section of the fire makes a direct attack impossible.
Itap steep, there aren’t roads and it’s filled with beetle kill pine and other flammable timber.
She thought the blaze could be 3,000 acres larger by Monday. That would make the Spring Creek fire the second largest in Colorado’s history.
A slow but steady rain would help tremendously, but the fight to contain the Spring Creek fire has turned in favor of the firefighters.
“We see progress every single day,” McClave said.
Wildfires in Colorado and the U.S.
The map shows active wildfire locations and all 2018 fire perimeters*. The map defaults to Colorado; to see all wildfires, click “U.S.” in the view area. Click the map layers icon in the top right corner of the map to change map backgrounds and to toggle active and contained fires, and perimeters. Click a marker or perimeter for details. To view the full map and a table of all 2018 wildfires, click here.
*Data comes from two sources, and , and could contain inconsistencies. Map by Kevin Hamm and Daniel J. Schneider.
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