As of Sunday afternoon, the mandatory evacuation zone included the town of Campo in Baca County and an area bordered to the north by County Road J, to the east by County Road 36, to the west by County Road 24 and to the south by the Colorado-Oklahoma border, .

Emergency officials from Oklahoma at 12:47 p.m. Sunday and at 2:06 p.m.

The Sharpe fire sparked Friday evening in Oklahoma’s Cimarron County and was estimated to have consumed roughly 3,500 acres as of Sunday morning, according to a from the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture.

By Sunday afternoon, the burn area had exploded in size to an estimated 13,198 acres, according to maps from the National Interagency Fire Center. By Sunday evening, Colorado Gov Jared Polis announced that he had verbally declared a disaster emergency and said in a news release that the fire’s size had grown to an estimated 28,000 acres. It’s unknown how many of those acres are in Colorado.

The declaration activates a state emergency plan and directs state agencies “to take responsibility for all response, recovery, and mitigation efforts on the Sharpe Fire,” the release says.

A roughly 70-mile stretch of U.S. 287 was closed between Lamar and the Oklahoma-Colorado border for the fire, according to the .

Heavy smoke from the fire created low visibility and unsafe conditions on the highway, state transportation officials said.

“Oklahomans in the Panhandle are facing active wildfires, and our state is mobilizing resources to respond,” said in a statement on social media. That includes sending air support to fight the Sharpe fire, he said.

Southern Colorado was under red flag warnings for critical fire danger on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. The warnings included parts of Baca, Crowley, Fremont, Huerfano, Kiowa and Otero counties . Another round of red flag warnings was forecast for the southern state on Monday .

“Elevated fire danger is expected,” the warnings stated. “Fires will catch and spread rapidly and erratically.”

of the fire showed walls of smoke stretching up into the sky from a dirt road as trucks from the volunteer-based responded.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission staff and the Colorado Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate have recommended approving only half or less of the increase requested by Xcel. The PUC has scheduled meetings and to hear from the public.

Xcel Energy, the state’s largest electricity utility, has said the rate increase is aimed at recovering the costs of investments the company has made since its last rate increase in 2023. The company said the average residential bill would go up by nearly 10% a month.

But the PUC staff said if the full increase is allowed, customers’ bills will have risen by 33.1% in three years. Bills are approximately 23% higher since 2023 and 10% would be added if Xcel’s rate request is approved, O’Neill said.

The staff attributes the sharp jump largely to riders, or costs added to bills after the general rate is authorized.

Some riders are the result of settlements with the utility and some are approved by the legislature so Xcel can pay for improvements or projects. The charges sometimes expire after costs are recovered. Many times the riders have a long life.

“Just because the rider is created doesn’t mean it will live forever. But most riders do,” said Erin O’Neill, the PUC’s deputy director of fixed utilities.

There are currently 11 riders on electric bills. Three are assessed using a percentage of the total revenue, which would boost Xcel’s requested rate by about $11 million to $367 million, O’Neill said.

The uses for the add-on charges cover a broad range: new transmission and distribution infrastructure; wildfire mitigation; the costs of moving to cleaner energy sources; modernizing the grid; electrifying transportation; and fuel costs.

The number of riders over the past few years has gone up, O’Neill said. The riders allow utilities to be paid as they incur the costs. The PUC staff prefers to see the receipts first, do the math and then reimburse the company, O’Neill said.

“This is needed infrastructure that we need to make our system more resilient and work better,” O’Neill said.

But the PUC staff and the consumer advocate’s office are recommending that regulators authorize lower rates of return that Xcel can collect on its investments and different financing mechanisms that will mean lower rates for customers.

The PUC staff’s analysis of the rate increase is correct if the full request is approved, Xcel spokeswoman Sydney Isenberg said in an email.

“If enacted fully, the 33% increase would be based on 2023 rates and is reflective of the significant investments we’ve made to the electric system over the past three years,” she added.

Colorado residential electric bills are 39% below the national average, according to Xcel. Even after the proposed increase, the average Colorado household would spend about 1.27% of its income on electric service, almost half the national average, Isenberg said.

The Office of the Utility Consumer Advocate has been vocal about what it criticizes as a “pancaking,” or piling on, of rate increases. In January, Xcel filed a request for a yearly increase of $190 million in revenue for its natural gas services.

Cory Skluzak, a rate and financial analyst with the consumer advocate’s office, said in a filing with the PUC that nearly 73% of Xcel’s residential electric customers and 41% of small business electric customers also get natural gas from the company.

“The company has taken a very aggressive approach to maximizing the benefit for shareholders. So, you see the company on a spending spree,” said Joseph Pereira, director of the consumer advocate’s office.

The consumer advocate has recommended that the PUC approve a rate increase of $138 million. In 2023, Xcel Energy sought a $312 million yearly increase in revenue. The PUC cut the request to about $97 million.

Pereira was critical of the increase in riders on Xcel bills.

“When we collect costs through rates, the company is fixed on the revenues that they can collect in that year. It forces them to make fiscally responsible decisions,” Pereira said.

Rate cases generally take months. The PUC makes a decision after testimony from the staff, the company, interest groups and after getting feedback from local governments and the public.

O’Neill of the PUC said while other parts of the country are experiencing higher electric bills because of the expansion of energy-intensive data centers, those aren’t a factor in Colorado at this point. Xcel has proposed rates intended to prevent residential and small-business customers from bearing the brunt of supplying the large computing facilities if more are built in the state.

The PUC understands that investments are needed for new transmission infrastructure, tools to reduce the risk of wildfires caused by the electric system and improved distribution, O’Neill said.

“And we need a healthy, financially stable utility. We also need affordability and reliability and we try to make sure that we’re always balancing those things.”

A new effort to force states to affirm the Trump administration’s views on DEI, transgender athletes and immigration when signing contracts with the U.S. Forest Service is threatening millions of dollars in wildfire grant funding and fire reduction projects on federal lands.

Some liberal states can’t sign the documents because the policies clash with state law, forestry experts say.

Already, at least one state is reporting that the new rules have stalled work to reduce wildfire risk and assist with projects on national forest lands. Other states say the requirements are so vague that they don’t know how to follow them. And some timber industry leaders believe the standoff could cut into their revenues.

“We’re kind of at an impasse,” said Washington State Forester George Geissler. “It����ap already starting to slow down or shut down work.”

The update to the requirements governing federal partnerships comes even as many Western states brace for a brutal wildfire season, following a winter that brought record high temperatures and a paltry snowpack.

On Dec. 31, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins with little fanfare new general terms and conditions governing partnerships for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Spelled out in dozens of pages of fine print are that require partner organizations to pledge compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive orders.

The new conditions apply to all USDA agencies, but the department hasn’t yet said whether it will enforce them for food assistance programs.

The agency, in a news release announcing the changes, framed the new terms as an effort to streamline regulations, protect national security and “eliminate radical left ideology.”

The Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service did not grant Stateline interview requests.

At the Forest Service, which is housed within USDA, the new policy applies to a wide range of grants and contracts aimed at reducing wildfire risk, restoring forest health and boosting timber production.

Forestry veterans say the new conditions have created an impasse with some Democratic-led states.

“It is significantly disruptive,” said Robert Bonnie, who served as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment during the Obama administration. “It����ap clearly targeted at Democratic states and Democratic partners.”

A coalition of 20 states and the District of Columbia filed a in March, claiming that the restrictions are unlawful. The lawsuit has largely focused on federal food assistance programs provided by the agency, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program.

In an April , Rollins said the new conditions had not yet been applied to food assistance programs, and that the agency had not made a “final decision” to cut off nutrition funding for states that don’t comply.

Forest Service programs

But the policy is already having an impact on some programs managed by the Forest Service.

Washington state has been unable to issue the latest round of Community Wildfire Defense Grants, a federal program that helps neighborhoods and towns reduce fuels and fortify homes in wildfire-prone areas.

Geissler, the state forester, said roughly 10 communities in Washington were set to receive large grants under the program, but the federal funding has been held up by the state’s refusal to sign the new terms and conditions.

“This is another example of the federal administration cutting off its nose to spite its face,” said David Perk, coordinator of the Washington State Lands Working Group, a coalition that weighs in on state forestry policies. “To add the additional layer of denying wildfire funding, that����ap insult to injury.”

The stalemate also threatens work that the U.S. Forest Service increasingly relies on states and other partners to do in national forests. The agency has leaned heavily on tools, such as the Good Neighbor Authority, that enable state agencies to carry out wildfire mitigation, restoration and timber projects on federal lands. Many observers believe the recently announced Forest Service reorganization that states will play an even bigger role in the years ahead.

But now those partnerships are in jeopardy. According to Geissler, Washington state can’t sign new Good Neighbor Authority agreements due to the new conditions.

“We’re trying to sign off on agreements for another chunk of work, and we can’t get it signed,” he said. “If you are looking for work to be done by the state on federal lands, we’re not doing it. If we’re not able to sign, both sides lose.”

Washington state has spent millions of dollars on projects to reduce wildfire risk and improve forest health on national forest lands. With the new ideology requirements, the feds are essentially turning away free help, said Bonnie, the former natural resources official. That����ap especially damaging, he noted, because Trump’s cuts to the Forest Service’s workforce and budget have further diminished what the agency can accomplish on its own.

The Trump administration is “damaging their own constituents,” he said. “There are a lot of conservative voters in rural Washington who want to see partnerships that reduce the probability of extreme wildfire. This will stop that. It makes absolutely no sense.”

Washington state is still working on Forest Service projects signed under previous agreements. But without new agreements, work on the ground could stall in six to eight months, Geissler said.

State responses

Nearly 20 state forestry officials contacted by Stateline did not respond or declined interview requests, citing the ongoing litigation and the need to maintain a working relationship with the Forest Service.

But one timber industry leader said Oregon was facing similar disruptions that prevented the state from signing new agreements with the Forest Service.

“This will lead to reduced revenues for (state forestry agencies),” Nick Smith, public affairs director with the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, said in an email to Stateline. “As partners, our industry will be impacted if it disrupts or cancels current or future timber sales under these contracts.”

While most state forestry officials have been unwilling to publicly comment about the situation, several have filed legal declarations in support of the multistate lawsuit challenging the new terms and conditions.

Scott Bowen, director of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, wrote in a that his agency has more than $87 million from active grants with the Forest Service. Those grants cover wildfire response, forest health, invasive species, urban tree canopy and revegetation, among other issues.

“If these funds were withheld, DNR would have to shut down critical capabilities to assist rural communities with fire preparedness and response,” Bowen wrote.

Bowen added that the Forest Service has already said one program, a grant to protect environmentally important forests from being converted to a nonforest use, will be subject to the new terms and conditions.

In the lawsuit, many state officials said that the new compliance requirements are so vague that they’re nearly impossible to follow. Several of the legal declarations note that the new conditions do not explain what it means to “promote gender ideology,” a practice the Department of Agriculture now seeks to ban.

Many states also objected to the agency’s requirement that no one in the country illegally obtain “taxpayer-funded benefits.” Josh Kurtz, secretary of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, noted in a that it would be impossible to confirm that grants to reduce wildfire risk, expand urban tree canopy and improve forest health do not benefit Marylanders who lack legal immigration status.

Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit that advocates for public employees, said the new terms are aimed at directing a greater share of federal funding to Trump’s political allies.

“You’re going to see a bifurcation where you’ll have red states getting grants and blue states won’t,” he said.

‘More questions than answers’

In March, the National Association of State Foresters sent a letter to Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz expressing concerns about the new terms and conditions. Jason Hartman, the group’s president and the state forester of Kansas, described a chaotic situation.

“To date, the (Forest Service) has not provided adequate guidance or interpretation of the new (terms and conditions),” he wrote. “National-level meetings between State Foresters and the Forest Service have resulted in more questions than answers. State Foresters around the country have been given differing instructions and interpretations in different geographic locations.”

Hartman noted at least one instance in which a timber sale totaling 80 million board feet was held up by the new conditions. (That����ap enough to build roughly 5,000 homes.) He asked the Forest Service to delay the effective date of the new conditions until the agency could provide more clarity.

He also outlined another set of issues causing problems for states. One major complication, he said, is the requirement that states receive federal approval before issuing any subawards or contracts. That has created a massive bureaucratic hassle, he wrote, in “direct conflict” with the Forest Service’s reliance on state partnerships to cut red tape.

The new terms also require environmental reviews for projects to be completed before partnership agreements can be signed. But Hartman noted that states often assist in those very environmental reviews, which they won’t be able to do if they can’t sign the agreements first.

Wyoming State Forester Kelly Norris also noted that issue in an email to Stateline, saying she expected the Forest Service to update the environmental review section soon.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

©2026 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

For decades, large wildfires were managed through the Incident Command System, a framework that depends on highly trained teams at the federal, state, and local levels. These teams coordinate everything from strategy to evacuations and communication with communities.

Today, fewer than 38 of the largest teams, known as “Complex Incident Management Teams”, are expected to be available nationwide, a sharp decline from previous years. But even that number is optimistic, because many incident teams are no longer fully staffed. Personnel shortages have forced teams to share members; obviously, those members cannot be deployed to different fires at the same time. On paper, capacity remains. In practice, it does not.

This is not an accident. It is the cumulative result of a decade of declining federal participation in wildfire management, compounded now by recent cuts to non-fire federal personnel. These cuts may seem unrelated to wildfire response, but they strike at its core.

Much of the wildfire system depends on specialists from other roles–hydrologists, biologists, planners — who step into fire assignments when needed. As those positions disappear, so does a critical reserve of experienced responders.

What remains is a workforce that����ap smaller and increasingly strained. Many of the people still filling these roles are senior employees who, during a busy season, can hit federal pay caps, effectively eliminating financial incentives to keep working long hours under dangerous conditions. At the same time, there’s deteriorating morale and ongoing administrative upheaval, all caused by staff cuts aimed at reducing the size of the federal workforce.

As one fire manager put it bluntly, the only way to cope has been “to care less.”

Against this backdrop, the public is assured that wildfire staffing remains stable. But there has been no comprehensive accounting of how many fire-qualified personnel have been lost through early retirements and deferred resignations, and what could be lost in the new reorganization.

The gap between official assurances and operational reality is growing. This matters.

It matters because the system is already under strain. As of April 23 this year, almost 1.8 million acres have burned nationwide, nearly twice as much as the year-to-date average over the previous 10 years. This includes the 640,000-acre Morrill Fire in Nebraska. Last year, which was a relatively mild fire year, the U.S. Forest Service still spent a record amount on fire suppression–nearly $5 billion.

Why? In part, because of how risk is increasingly avoided. Political and administrative pressure to suppress every fire has changed behavior on the ground. Local decision-makers, aware of the professional consequences if a fire escapes initial containment, are incentivized to order more resources than they might otherwise need.

The result is scarcity that will show up in experienced leadership and fully staffed management teams. The remaining Complex Incident Management teams will be stretched thin, sometimes asked to manage multiple major fires events simultaneously. Fatigue will follow, and with fatigue comes risk–of poor decisions, accidents, or injuries and fatalities among firefighters. Communities will feel it too.

Incident Management Teams don’t just fight fires; they serve as a lifeline for affected areas. They coordinate evacuations, connect local officials with state and federal agencies and help lay the groundwork for recovery. If those teams are unavailable or overstretched, communities will face greater disruption and slower recoveries.

Whether 2026 becomes a historically severe fire year remains uncertain. But the conditions –environmental and institutional — are aligning in troubling ways.

The United States has spent years building one of the most sophisticated wildfire-response systems in the world. That system is now being asked to do more with fewer people and much higher stakes: Wildfire seasons have become longer and more devastating; they are a defining feature of the American landscape.

The question is not whether the fires will come. It is whether we can still respond effectively when they do.

David Calkin is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. Until recently, he was a senior scientist for the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. He now runs a wildfire consulting business in Missoula, Montana.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

“We are facing a very challenging fire year where our resources will be tested, across not only Colorado but across the West,” said Mike Morgan, the director of , at a news conference announcing .

The Front Range and northwestern Colorado face the highest risk of fire through June and July, Gov. Jared Polis said. The plains east of Interstate 25 will also face increased risk during windy days until the grasses turn green, according to the outlook.

But every corner of the state will be vulnerable.

Drought covered all of Colorado as of Tuesday, according to . Much of the northwest corner of the state was categorized as in exceptional drought — the most severe category used by the monitor. The Denver metro was in extreme drought, the second-most-severe category.

At this time last year, only 44% of the state was in drought, and none of that drought was classified as exceptional.

“We haven’t had enough rain and we haven’t had enough snow — and it’s going to be a challenging year for us,” Morgan said.

The impact of this winter’s record-low snowpack on the upcoming fire season is difficult to overstate, said , a researcher at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, who studies climate, wildfires and mountain forests across the West.

“It’s simply drier, so it’s easier to ignite, and if it does ignite, it spreads more easily through the forest,” he said.

The precipitation that fell across the Front Range and central mountains in recent days will do little to reverse months of warm, dry weather, Polis said Thursday during the briefing at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Broomfield. It’s unclear how strong the summer monsoon pattern will be this year, and it’s unclear whether it will bring late-season moisture, according to the outlook.

Much of the West faces a similarly grim fire outlook, Polis said. That means that resources shared regionally — like federal firefighters and equipment — will be in high demand and hard to come by.

The higher wildfire risk and strain on firefighting resources mean that Colorado will not allow any fires to burn longer than necessary, Morgan said. In past years, fire officials have allowed fires to continue burning if they did not pose a threat and provided ecological benefit.

The state in recent years has significantly increased its own firefighting capacity, including by purchasing several planes and helicopters. But in that same time period, climate change, drought and an increasing number of people living in wildfire-prone areas have increased risk, Polis said.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 wildfires spark in Colorado during an average fire year, and fire crews contain the vast majority of them before they become large and destructive, Morgan said. About 90% of those fires are caused unintentionally by people, he said.

All of the 10 largest wildfires in Colorado history have . Four of the top five have burned since 2020.

“Since the 1990s, the number, intensity, complexity, and impacts of wildfires in Colorado have been growing exponentially and experts predict that it will continue to
worsen,” the fire outlook report states.

Climate change is increasingly shaping wildfires, Kulakowski said. Vegetation dries out faster as temperatures warm, allowing fires to ignite more easily and spread more rapidly.

Repeated warm years give plants little opportunity to recover.

“For a long time, there have been forecasts and predictions about the amplification of wildfires,” Kulakowski said. “We had a lot of time — this isn’t a surprise to anyone who’s been studying this for the past couple of decades. But we’re here now, (and) this is happening.”

Regional leaders from the U.S. Forest Service and the newly created said they planned to hire as many firefighters as they had previously. Budget cuts to the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior will not impact firefighting capabilities, they said.

While summer wildfires are inevitable, federal disaster aid to help those impacted by blazes is no longer dependable.

The Trump administration in recent months has denied access to millions of dollars in federal disaster recovery money, including for the Lee and Elk fires that burned more than 137,000 acres in northwest Colorado last August.

Polis said post-fire recovery is much more difficult and slow without federal dollars.

“We hope that federal partnership comes back,” Polis said, noting that the state has counted on federal disaster relief for years.

Firefighters have already battled several wildfires this year, including the 2,100-acre currently burning east of Trinidad. The term “fire season” is irrelevant in Colorado these days because the risk is not contained to seasons, said Stan Hilkey, the executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

Polis and other state leaders urged Coloradans to and harden their properties so they’ll be less susceptible to flames.

“Let the professionals do the fireworks this year,” Morgan said.

Fires not only impact those who live near the flames but also water resources, insurance rates and air quality, officials said.

“Fire is a problem for all of us,” Morgan said. “It doesn’t matter where you live in Colorado or the Western United States.”

“The premium increases in Colorado have simply been too high, and that’s why we are launching this roadmap to reduce homeowners’ insurance by $800, on average, by the end of next year,” Polis said at a news conference on Thursday.

In a state that has seen insurance premiums double since 2020, the savings would work out to around a 20% reduction, based on what the Colorado Division of Insurance estimates as an average premium of $4,200 per home.

Colorado residents have faced the highest percentage premium increases measured in any state this decade, according to a ranking from Lending Tree.

Home prices rose sharply right after the pandemic, which triggered a delayed spike in property taxes in 2024. And all along, insurance premiums have been rising, putting Colorado homeowners under an intensifying financial pressure.

Depending on a home’s location, up to 54% of premiums are tied to hail risk and up to 25% to fire risk, according to a study from the Division of Insurance.

The governor’s plan includes encouraging and incentivizing the use of hail impact-resistant shingles any time a roof is added or replaced in the state and promoting efforts that fortify homes against wildfires.

Separately, the governor’s Mountain Pine Beetle Supplemental package includes funding for wildfire mitigation efforts and the extension and expansion of tax credits for homeowners who create a defensible space around their homes.

And should disaster hit, the state wants to provide more emergency support to communities and to ensure they have solid housing recovery plans in place, using lessons learned from the Marshall fire in Boulder County.

The fire, which hit at the end of 2021, destroyed 1,084 homes and cost $2 billion in property damage. But three years later, about two-thirds of the homes have been replaced, compared to a national average of 25% within five years.

Speeding up construction times reduces what insurers have to pay out for temporary housing, which in turn can lower total claims.

As more mitigation efforts are adopted, regulators, under the roadmap, will push to make sure carriers recognize them when it comes to determining risk and calculating premiums.

A law approved last year and which takes effect July 1, HB 25-1182, requires insurers to increase transparency and accountability in how they assess risk, especially for wildfires.

“We knew that there were models in the market that weren’t properly accounting for the mitigation steps that people were taking, and we need to encourage people to do more mitigation,” said Michael Conway, Colorado’s Insurance Commissioner.

The state has also established a Fair Access to Insurance Requirements or FAIR plan, which provides policies of last resort in areas that the private market is unwilling or unable to insure. It went into effect this year and provides up to $750,000 in coverage on residential properties and $5 million on commercial properties.

Stretched consumers may raise deductibles and lower coverage caps just to have some protection, essentially betting they won’t need to file a claim. That creates a problem of underinsurance, which can be financially devastating when a disaster hits.

Carole Walker, executive director at Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, said the industry has long supported mitigation efforts, but added Colorado has become a much tougher market to operate in, for reasons beyond the industry’s control.

“Realistically, insurance premiums have to be justified, and insurers have to be taking in enough premiums to pay out claims,” she said. “Colorado is one of the least profitable and most expensive states in the country.”

About 5 million of the state’s 6 million residents live along the Front Range, which also happens to be the state’s most disaster-prone zone.

Wildfire has become a growing danger in the communities in and near the foothills. To the East, hailstorms have been unrelenting in the punishing blows they deliver.

And much of the more limited growth the state is seeing is coming in higher-risk hail and fire areas. Weld County, for example, was the state’s fastest-growing county in population last year. It is also ground zero for the state’s hail belt.

State Farm in hail claims in Texas, compared to $229 million in Colorado. But on a per capita basis, Colorado ranked first in the country for hail damage, while Texas ranked 8th.

Walker said that in Texas, 43% of homeowners use impact-resistant shingles, despite the higher cost. The message is getting through. But in Colorado, the “uptake” rate is closer to 10%.

Without better protection, homeowners are vulnerable to waves of damaging storms. The more claims they make, the more premiums go up, and they put themselves at a higher risk of having their coverage canceled.

Walker commended Polis for his emphasis on mitigation and for preventing claims or reducing their severity.

“It is a step in the right direction,” she said. But making Colorado an actuarially sound state again will take time, and some cooperation from the elements.

With one of the , it’s possible that cooperation isn’t coming in 2026.

Story updated 2:25 p.m. Friday: The legislation moving through the legislature originally cited was incorrect. It is Senate Bill 26-155. Several paragraphs related to wildfire mitigation have been deleted as they don’t pertain to that bill.

One firefighter was taken to the hospital with second-degree burns from fighting the Ponds fire, which started in the 1200 block of Catalpa Place at around 5 p.m., Poudre Fire Authority officials said in a post on X.

The fire burned approximately 8 acres before crews gained containment just after 7 p.m., according to the agency.

Most voluntary and all mandatory evacuation orders were lifted as of 7 p.m.

Firefighters are strengthening the fire line around the fire to ensure no further spread. The fire is estimated at 8 acres at this time. Fire suppression aircraft are responding to strengthen the fire line.

— poudrefire (@poudrefire)

The Hammer fire has burned approximately 4,900 acres since it was first reported at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday, Sgt. Kurt Smith with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said at a briefing Thursday.

Fire crews ordered mandatory evacuations for the area near Hanover on Wednesday night, but lifted those evacuations at around 2 p.m. Thursday as on the wildfire, county officials said on Facebook.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, Smith said. While the area east of Fountain is sparsely populated, crews were initially concerned that high winds, warm temperatures and low humidity would allow the wildfire to spread closer to neighborhoods, he said.

officials canceled classes at Hanover Junior/Senior High School on Thursday because the building was being used as an evacuation center, school officials said.

The district also canceled classes and school activities on Friday to allow crews to clean up after the fire. Classes will resume Tuesday.

Updated 4:29 p.m. April 23, 2026: This article was updated to correct the day mandatory evacuation orders were issued. They were issued Wednesday night.

issued red flag warnings Wednesday for most of Colorado, including the Front Range, Eastern Plains and southern state — where Xcel said it would implement a at noon.

The utility noted at 4:30 p.m. on its website that the wind speeds were not as high as expected, so a preemptive shut-off was not needed.

The red flag warnings, which started at 10 a.m. and will remain in effect until midnight, call for wind gusts of up to 60 mph and humidity as low as 5%, according to the weather service.

“Extreme fire danger is expected,” stated a for the San Luis Valley area, which was impacted by Xcel’s outages. “Fires will uncontrollably spread and be very destructive.”

The San Luis Valley is also experiencing extreme to exceptional drought, .

Xcel’s preemptive power outages would have affected roughly 7,100 customers in Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla and Rio Grande counties, according to the utility.

The utility thanked customers for their patience and recognized some may have been disrupted by ultimately unnecessary preparations for a preemptive shut-off.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

A combination of strong winds, low humidity and “unseasonably warm and dry” conditions will create critical fire danger in Colorado’s Eastern Plains, Front Range foothills and high mountain valleys on Wednesday, .

The utility is planning for a possible beginning around 9 a.m. Wednesday for some customers in Garfield, Mesa and Pitkin counties and around 11 a.m. for some customers in Alamosa, Conejos, Costilla, Rio Grande and Saguache counties, according to a Wednesday afternoon news release.

Xcel did not state how many customers could expect to be affected.

The National Weather Service has declared a red flag warning for the San Luis Valley for the hot, dry, windy weather that is expected. The area also experiencing extreme to exceptional drought, according to the .

Weather conditions are expected to start improving around 7 p.m. Wednesday, and crews will start restoring power as soon as it is safe to do so.

Strong winds may also damage power lines and cause unplanned outages, according to the utility.

In areas not affected by the preemptive outages, Xcel may still implement “,” utility officials said. The settings make power lines more sensitive and shut off the flow of electricity if an issue, like a tree branch touching the line, is detected.

The settings can also make outages last longer, because utility crews must inspect the lines and the surrounding area before restoring power, according to Xcel Energy.

This is a developing story and may be updated.