Colorado Springs Firestorm

[PTPatrick]

Today we witnessed some of the most extreme fire behavior I've ever heard of. For the past few days we have watched the Waldo fire stay relatively contained to steep foothill mountains with no buildings getting burned. Many people were getting antsy and starting to want to return home during evacuations. Around 4 dry thunderstorms kicked up and brought 65 mph winds, which pushed the fire quickly over the final ridge and into Colorado Springs' northwest suburbs. Until then the city itself seemed relatively secure, behind the last ridge before the gentle slope down into I-25. It was almost like it stormed a fort. Within an hour suburban neighborhoods started burning on the northwest side of town as the first pushed toward the Air Force Acadamy. Around 32,000 people quickly had to evacuate. I have watched live coverage tonight and at one point it just appeared that the was pushing through like it was in a densely packed city. I think we take for granted sometimes, saying wildfires burn mountain homes, and homes in flat lands are safe. Not saying the proximity to the foothills made this area "safe", but if you has asked me whether a fire would ever sweep these areas like San Fran after the earthquake, I would say you were crazy. Here are some links to local news, plenty of pics on there, I don't have an image shack account so I can't post.

http://www.gazette.com/
http://www.denverpost.com/

meanwhile, we tied our all-time record yesterday and today in Denver at 105...the state is a tinderbox for sure. was in aspen this weekend where the temp was around 90. Insane for a ski town. Colorado springs BROKE its all time record at 101.

edit by Tolakram: Fixed typo in subject

[somethingfunny]

I'm watching the live stream now. This is horrible, it reminds me of Bastrop or Oakland.

[somethingfunny]

[CajunMama]

I have a classmate/friend that lives in Monument about 15 miles north of e. woodman rd. She's been posting pics on fb of what she can see from her home and it's so scary. She says they've evacuated across the highway from her. They have bags packed and are ready to go if they have to evacuate.

I hope all our Colorado people are safe.

[PTPatrick]

It's definately a rough go. Just saw on news where evac orders were moved south again...all the news crews scrambling to move. I fear there may be deaths associated with this as quickly as it swept through, but hopefully not. As I left work today I kind of had creepy feelings of anxiety. Here I live in central Denver, but seeing what was going on in Colorado springs, and to leave work to see a smoke plume rising over Boulder was just too much. The situation in boulder today could have gone down like Colorado springs, with the new fire being being very near neighborhoods in Boulder city limits, and ironically NCAR...but at least NCAR is supposedly non combustible.

[Cyclenall]

I'm watching the live stream now. This is horrible, it reminds me of Bastrop or Oakland.

Link to the live stream? And is it so bad that they are streaming in the middle of the night?!?

I posted about this Firestorm in the records thread and I think the mainstream media are covering it well. Surprised there wasn't a thread on here until now about it.

[PTPatrick]

I'm guessing based on the maps and trying to estimate via google satellite views, somwhere in the neighborhood of 250-300 homes to have burned in a few hours time. This could dwarf the High park fire in homes burned(last count 257), which took a few weeks to burn as much. Unfortunately...that's probably a low estimate...just going by what media seems sure to have burned, which is most of what's west of Flying W Ranch Road. Unclear if fire has crossed it yet.

[Cyclenall]

I found the live stream: http://www.9news.com/video/9newsonline.aspx

The problem is it crashes one of the browsers seconds after it starts playing .

Off-Topic: I searched Google "Live Stream of Colorado Firestorm" and the post I made just a few minutes ago showed up as the 4th result!! That was just a few minutes ago...how can the Google crawl engine be that fast!?!? I also saw something on there from just 2 minutes ago...Google is omnipresent on the Internet...

[somethingfunny]

Here's KKTV's stream. It's worked pretty well.

http://www.kktv.com/video/live

[Scott Patterson]

Slide show:

http://photos.denverpost.com/mediacente ... ods/38318/

Terrible.

[PTPatrick]

http://ow.ly/i/J7Xi

perimeter map...amazingly not as bad as I thought, but still shows plenty of streets and suburban tracts effected.

[Hurricane Andrew]

Is this the High Park fire?

[Hurricane Andrew]

http://ow.ly/i/J7Xi

perimeter map...amazingly not as bad as I thought, but still shows plenty of streets and suburban tracts effected.

What overlay do you use?

[brunota2003]

They need to find a way to use the military more. I'm sure artillery units and fighter jets could use some firing practice/bomb run practice. Just instead of explosives, use fire retardants and such in them, and make the canisters biodegradable. That would also give you almost pinpoint accuracy...so if a fire unit is evacuating and is about to be overrun, a "bomb" could be dropped between them and the fire to help slow the advance of the fire.

[Hurricane Andrew]

http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2929/

[WeatherGuesser]

http://ow.ly/i/J7Xi

Do you have a legitimate link? Not one that is a TLD from Libya? Wiki: .ly TLD

[PTPatrick]

yeah I guess that link timed out...It was a twitter link I think. It was working earlier. Either way there are maps on the various Denver and COS news orgs websites.

[somethingfunny]

This was in today's Denver Post (taken yesterday in Colorado Springs)

[CajunMama]

My friend, Barbara is was put under Pre-Evac notice around 2pm cdt. Haven't seen an update from her since.

[vbhoutex]

They need to find a way to use the military more. I'm sure artillery units and fighter jets could use some firing practice/bomb run practice. Just instead of explosives, use fire retardants and such in them, and make the canisters biodegradable. That would also give you almost pinpoint accuracy...so if a fire unit is evacuating and is about to be overrun, a "bomb" could be dropped between them and the fire to help slow the advance of the fire.

That is a novel idea. I wonder if something like that is workable.
I hate seeing the wildfires in Colorado(or anywhere). Brings back memories of last year in Texas. Praying for all affected by them.