One person has died and at least five homes were destroyed as Colorado becomes the latest western state to battle several major wildfires.
The Boulder county sheriff, Curtis Johnson, reported the death was discovered in one of the five homes burned by the Stone Canyon fire near the town of Lyons, but did not provide further details. The fire has burned more than 1,500 acres (607 hectares) and was reported 20% contained on Wednesday evening.
The Lyons fire is one of several major wildfires raging in Colorado’s Front Range, a densely populated corridor that includes Denver and stretches along the eastern edge of the Rocky mountains.
Close to 600 homes west of the small town of Conifer in the Denver metro area were forced to evacuate as the the Quarry fire continued to grow.
The fire began on Tuesday, and by Thursday afternoon, firefighting aircrafts were zipping back and forth between the blaze and a nearby reservoir, dumping water over the flames.
Five firefighters were injured Wednesday, including four who had heat exhaustion, said Mark Techmeyer, a spokesperson with the Jefferson county sheriff’s office.
The fire was in steep terrain that made it difficult to access, but no houses had been destroyed yet, authorities said. Officials said it remained a major hazard with hot temperatures and low humidity elevating the fire danger.
The fire has “proven to be one of the most challenging firefights I’ve seen”, Techmeyer said at a press conference Thursday as helicopters passed overhead.
“I haven’t been to bed,” 85-year-old Elden Coombs told the Denver Post after evacuating in the middle of the night from his home and being informed by authorities the evacuation could last for days. “I just hope they get the fire under control.”
Acres burned
US wildfires are measured in terms of acres. While the size of a wildfire doesn’t necessarily correlate to its destructive impact, acreage provides a way to understand a fire’s footprint and how quickly it has grown.
There are 2.47 acres in a hectare, and 640 acres in a square mile, but this can be hard to visualise. Here are some easy comparisons: one acre equates to roughly the size of an American football field. London’s Heathrow airport is about 3,000 acres. Manhattan covers roughly 14,600 acres, while Chicago is roughly 150,000 acres, and Los Angeles is roughly 320,000 acres.
Megafire
A megafire is defined by the National Interagency Fire Center as a wildfire that has burned more than 100,000 acres (40,000 hectares). That’s an area about the size of Rhode Island.
Containment level
A wildfire’s containment level indicates how much progress firefighters have made in controlling the fire. Containment is achieved by creating perimeters the fire can’t move across. This is done through methods such as putting fire retardants on the ground, digging trenches, or removing brush and other flammable fuels.
Containment is measured in terms of the percentage of the fire that has been surrounded by these control lines. A wildfire with a low containment level, such as 0% or 5%, is essentially burning out of control. A fire with a high level of containment, such as 90%, isn’t necessarily extinguished but rather has a large protective perimeter and a rate of growth that is under control.
Evacuation orders and warnings
Evacuation warnings and orders are issued by officials when a wildfire is causing imminent danger to people’s life and property. According to the California office of emergency services, an evacuation warning means that it's a good idea to leave an area or get ready to leave soon. An evacuation order means that you should leave the area immediately.
Red flag warning
A red flag warning is a type of forecast issued by the National Weather Service that indicates when weather conditions are likely to spark or spread wildfires. These conditions typically include dryness, low humidity, high winds and heat.
Prescribed burn
A prescribed burn, or a controlled burn, is a fire that is intentionally set under carefully managed conditions in order to improve the health of a landscape. Prescribed burns are carried out by trained experts such as members of the US forest service and indigenous fire practitioners. Prescribed burns help remove flammable vegetation and reduce the risk of larger, more catastrophic blazes, among other benefits.
Prescribed burning was once a common tool among Native American tribes who used “good fire” to improve the land, but was limited for much of the last century by a US government approach based on fire suppression. In recent years, US land managers have returned to embracing the benefits of prescribed burns, and now conduct thousands across the country every year.
Meanwhile, the Alexander Mountain fire in the Rocky mountains has burned more than 7,600 acres so far and is only 1% contained. Four thousand people in the town of Loveland are under evacuation orders.
Speaking at a news conference in Loveland, Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis, warned that air quality could deteriorate as the wildfire is expected to burn over the next several weeks. He also urged some people refusing to follow evacuation orders to do so rather than risk their lives.
Polis has deployed the state national guard to respond to wildfires affecting areas around Denver, the first fire-related deployment in Colorado since 2021. The national guard will not be firefighting, but instead be focusing efforts on road closures, logistics and supporting first responders.
A Loveland-area resident Becca Walter said her parents, who also live in the area, sent her a photo of flames climbing a nearby ridge Wednesday morning. They moved their eight horses to a friend’s ranch before evacuating to Walter’s house. She worried her parent’s house could be lost.
“You can rebuild a house, and you can rebuild a barn, but there are lot of memories in them that you can’t rebuild,” she said.
Hot, dry weather and wind gusts elevated fire danger across the Front Range. Forecasters said the high temperatures were expected to persist into early next week but lighter winds in coming days could make it easier to control the blazes.
Other western states are facing similar dangers, with rising temperatures intensifying fire risk across the US west.
There are 95 large, active wildfires in the US, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, with nearly 28,000 firefighters deployed in response.
New large fires were reported in Idaho, south-east Montana and north Texas.
Fires in south-eastern Wyoming triggered evacuations in Hartville and unincorporated Pleasant Valley.
In Oregon, wildfires have scorched more than 1m acres in recent weeks.
In northern California, the enormous Park fire outside of Chico had raged through nearly 390,000 acres by Thursday evening. Flames have destroyed at least 430 structures and threaten thousands more. Fire crews are racing to contain the blaze ahead of triple-digit temperatures forecast for Thursday through next week.
In southern California, firefighters made progress on fires in the Sequoia national forest, including the blaze that scorched through almost the entirety of the historic mining town of Havilah.
It has been a brutal start to wildfire season in the US west. “We’re going into the heart of the fire season starting in August. We’ve got a long road ahead of us,” said Billy See, an incident commander with Cal Fire, California’s fire agency.
Associated Press contributed reporting
