Massive Colorado wildfires started accidentally by U.S. Forest Service employee

Great. So because some woman was pissed off over her husband, this entire state is under disaster alert, water restrictions, firework bans and is facing a loss of tourism money. Ugh.

One thing's for sure, the second day after the fire started, I was up at 4 am (thank you food poisoning) and saw Gov. Owens on TV. He was quoted saying that he wishes there was a way to punish "the idiot that started this fire" beyond the full extent of the law. Yikez.

 

That's gotta suck.

 

Reminds me of the fire two years ago that ran through Los Alamos, NM. Destroying over 250 homes.


Totally devastating.

 

Damn, the made for TV movie is gonna rule!

 

Nugget I was in Denver this weekend went to your ESPN zone resteraunt I must say I can speak to all Houston Fans we are jealous! The food was excellent and the 16th street mall was very nice. I stayed at the Hotel Monaco and even traveled into the mountains to go to the casino's in Blackhawk.

I did see off I-25 and 70 east and west signs everywhere banning fireworks.
Also if anyone has not seen ATOC in digital projection United Artist Theatres has it showing in Denver.
Again I can speak for all Houston we are jealous!

But your city is very beautiful and the people are very friendly, even the street bums were very entertaining. If it is any indication that Houston is wanting to build up downtown similiar to Denver then I am all for it!

 

Watch.... she'll sue the ex-boyfriend for NOT sending her letter via e-mail. This would have prevented the whole problem.

 

Isn't it probable that if she hadn't accidentally set the fire...that someone else would have...either accidentally or intentionally? There is always someone waiting in line to start a fire with a cigarette butt thrown out a car window, setting up an illegal campfire, or rubbing two sticks together. With the extremely dry conditions in Colorado, a lightning strike could have set off the fire as well. It's just hard to believe that Colorado wouldn't have gone up in flames at some point anyway.

It's also hard to believe that by burning a stupid letter....she could start a huge fire like this. The burning letter must have floated away and lit nearby timber or something. Obviously, it didn't stay in the campfire ring. That is pretty ironic, though. I would have to say she is not too bright considering that is her job. That may be reason enough to give her the maximum fine and punishment. I would feel guilty as hell. I'm not sure I could look at myself in the mirror after causing such a devastating fire.



Surf

 

While the loss of homes & businesses (and any loss of life) is certainly tragic, wildfires are extremely beneficial to the ecosystem.

 

God I feel sorry for you guys. When my brother told me about this I thought it was a joke. How about balling up the paper and throwing it off to the side, why burn it? *Sigh*. Now there are people who's livelihoods, and even lives are in danger!

 

I was thinking the same thing. I had saw something like that about a few weeks ago on the Animal Planet, or Discovery, or National Geographic, one of those channels. The Wildlife will be fine thankfully. But the people and their property and jobs will suffer unfortunately.

 

Can't really blame those things on her.....most of them were going to happen anyway....

 

I just got back from woking three fires since Wednesday. I'm tired and need sleep, but also needed to check the board to see the Yao news, so this may not make any sense.

The morning after the arrest, we had to tell about 300 firefighters what had happened with the Hayman Fire. Most folks were stunned that it would be someone who works for one of the firefighting agencies and very few folks believed the love letter story. There was nobody around who knew the woman, but if you know anything about fire behavior, it just didn't sound right. Now it looks like the fire investigators believe she deliberately set the fire and staged it to look like an escaped fire.

If this is so (and I believe it to be) then this woman deserves everything she gets. I'm sure she didn't envision the current size of the fire, but she knew the conditions in the forest when she lit the fire and she knew that even though it is early in the fire season we are stretched thin on resources and everyone is already fatigued. This fire could suck up so many firefighting resources (especially tankers and helicopters) that we have a domino effect in place and small fires get big because of diminished local resources.

This is an inherently dangerous business and no matter how well we do with safety preparations, we'll always have have to deal with deaths, as we saw on the tanker crash. To have to face that danger because someone deliberately set the woods on fire just flat pisses me off.

I know it's obvious she had some issues and some problems, but I'm grumpy and not in a forgiving mood today.

On other points, wildfire is neither good nor bad, it just is. It will consume fuels (be they trees or houses) at a rate and spread that is determined by it's environment (humidity, slope, winds, fuel moisture, fuel density, drought, temp, etc.) From our perspective, a nice surface fire is good for the ecosystem and a raging stand replacement fire is not so good, but Mother Nature doesn't care as she operates on her own timescale and forest time is measured in human generations, not years. The fact is, we've altered the forest structure across the West by taking away surface fuels (grazing) and suppressing all fires. Momma Nature's just trying to equalize the situation, which sucks for us, because we're seeing more intense fires than ever before. (If ya'll are interested in this last point, I'll post more when I'm in a more coherent state.)

Animals have several strategies in dealing with fires. Large mammals run away. (In Cerro Grande--the Los Alamos fire--46,000 acres--we saw one elk carcass and we don't think the fire killed the elk.) Birds fly away, though if they are nesting at the time, it's tough luck for the young ones. Small mammals either burrow down or have the capacity to repopulate exceptionaly fast within a year or two after a fire when the first plant colonizers are shrubs and bushes that produce lots of nuts and berries that squirrels, chipmunks, etc. really love.

On the tanker crash, the early theory is that the plane was stressed on some earlier runs. That looked like a good, stable approach and there were no radical manuevers going on. The plane itself is a workhorse and wouldn't just fail like that. I was watching several tanker drops from about 150 yards away just a few days ago and I can't imagine something like that happening right in front of me.

Well, so much for rest... I'm off to the Trampas Fire. The way this year is going, my next post will be in November.

 

Stay safe man.

 

No kidding.

Please be safe. I know there's a certain risk/excitement element that draws people into smoke jumping, but I still have so much respect for you guys.

please be safe.

 

I love Denver. It really is such a nice city. Glad to see others realize it.

 

Thanks for the sentiments folks, but I'm not usually in dangerous situations. I'm almost completely rear echelon and completely so on big fires. There's a lot of planning, analysis, logistics, etc. that goes into supporting the guys on the line and at this point in my career, that's where I can be found. I can dig line if I have to, but I'm a long ways from a Hot Shot or Smoke Jumper.