Busy day for Larimer County Emergency Services, Forest Fire is looking like a big one

Just a few links for anyone wanting to follow this.

www.9news.com...

www.radioreference.com...

Listening to Larimer County Fire and EMS and Larimer County Sheriff

More evacuations on the way.

Stay safe.

Getting nervous and hoping the wind plays in our favor.

Another link: Map of Highland Park Fire, Fort Collins, Colorado

I'll dig through some pics from yesterday and pop a couple up in a few moments...

ETA:

Well... guess most was video, but here's one pic from last night. Gonna go get more here in a bit from the same spot.

This fire started about 6 a.m. yesterday morning. It grew from the discovered 50 acres to 200 acres in one hour. When I took that picture, it was up to ~6000 acres. When we got up this morning, the estimates were floating around 10,000 to 20,000 acres with 0% containment! They are now evacuating the first evacuation setup in LaPorte.

Seeing that Fort Collins is home to CSU, I don't think we have to worry too much about the fire, but some things can get out of control really fast, as this fire already has. We were flooding last year this time (I should drop a video of that... about the same time of year). Freaky stuff... I'd rather chase a tornado than run from a fire.

ETA:

Doing video stuff is slow, lol... ugh. Boring, crappy music but better than listening to cars drive by.

reply to post by Earthscum


That is a very scary pic - Hope things improve soon. Stay safe.

Just got back from a 2 hour walk. Walked about 3 miles from our apartment to the foothills, Picture 1 and 5 are from the exact same spot as the first picture I posted above. As you can see, it's insane... 2 hours difference between pic 1 and 5, that's all.

I live way south of that....well over an hour away....
And all day we could smell the smoke....and it has been a yellow haze all day....winds have been blowing it down as far as the Springs...

feel horrible for the people up there....its that time of year though

Oddly enough, we haven't really got a bunch of smoke. Every once in a while it will blow through town and then it's clear again.

As of right now we are at 20,000 acres. They are booting people (evacuations) from the reservoir area now. Still 0% containment. They are bringing in "the man" to run the show tomorrow, from the sounds of it. I'm guessing that they pulled a couple planes off the New Mexico fire to come in.

Yeah... we consider the reservoir within "walking distance" of our apt. We live almost directly east of it, and the winds are blowing from the west. The distance we walked today to get to the foothills was only about 2 miles. Another mile around the park we were at, and then the 2 miles home... and talking about "if there's anything left up there, let's hike up for a night", no sweat. Lol. I don't think we're going to be camping up there this summer, sadly.

Out of all the people on ATS, am I really the only one this close? There's gotta be other 303's here. If so, hope you're safe and well.

reply to post by greeneyedleo


Just getting to watching the news, saw pictures of Denver. That's crazy. FC sits in a wierd area, so we've just watched the stream of smoke all day. It looks like everything south of Loveland is getting the smoke. Should say to you to be safe, also. One evacuee girl they interviewed said something that made me sad: (paraphrase) "The ranch was my safe place, and it's not safe anymore".
I wish I could shake Hickenlooper's hand when this is all over, though. The way he handled the press conference this morning made me proud... No bull, it's NOT a good morning, sorry, this is the situation, and it's not good, no fluff, and one of the most sincere condolences I've ever seen on TV.

I grew up in Wyoming, boyscouts, mountain family, all that. I learned all about fire as a kid, and have been in a couple situations close to forest fires, as well as plains fires (grass fires). Some friends and I were repelling at Vedauwoo ("vee-da-voo"... without looking it up, I think it's a German name) and came across a fire that my buddy and I hauled off to the fire station to report. Drove alongside a fire once as a kid. It was really weird looking through the trees and seeing so much fire.

Anyways, it was kind of a trip today to realize that I kind of understand how people near a volcano feel when it starts to spit smoke. That fire is on the move... I imagine people feel the same kind of anticipation about ash and lava.

Originally posted by Earthscum
reply to post by greeneyedleo

 

Just getting to watching the news, saw pictures of Denver. That's crazy. FC sits in a wierd area, so we've just watched the stream of smoke all day. It looks like everything south of Loveland is getting the smoke. Should say to you to be safe, also.

One evacuee girl they interviewed said something that made me sad: (paraphrase) "The ranch was my safe place, and it's not safe anymore".
I wish I could shake Hickenlooper's hand when this is all over, though. The way he handled the press conference this morning made me proud... No bull, it's NOT a good morning, sorry, this is the situation, and it's not good, no fluff, and one of the most sincere condolences I've ever seen on TV.

I grew up in Wyoming, boyscouts, mountain family, all that. I learned all about fire as a kid, and have been in a couple situations close to forest fires, as well as plains fires (grass fires). Some friends and I were repelling at Vedauwoo ("vee-da-voo"... without looking it up, I think it's a German name) and came across a fire that my buddy and I hauled off to the fire station to report. Drove alongside a fire once as a kid. It was really weird looking through the trees and seeing so much fire.

Anyways, it was kind of a trip today to realize that I kind of understand how people near a volcano feel when it starts to spit smoke. That fire is on the move... I imagine people feel the same kind of anticipation about ash and lava.

edit on 10-6-2012 by Earthscum because: (no reason given)

im even further than denver and at a much much higher evelvation...so we are getting the smoke smell/haze still.....
while we are safe from that fire, we have had numerous fires around us too - but not this summer yet - last summer was bad.....

welcome to summer in CO.... 'tis very sad what is happening up there....watching them reporting live right now on 9....

Live up in Wyo. Saturday was insane! Seemed like the plume was directly covering Cheyenne. If the forest west of FoCo is anything like the forests over by Laramie, this fire could burn for months! The Med Bow/Snowy Range has about 85-90% mortality due to the pine beetle infestation the last decade.

Used to be a wildland firefighter a few years ago. My synopsis, is let it burn. Just unfortunate that the property and lives are intermixed. Smelling the smoke made me long for those long hot summer days of busting tail, and wondering if the crew would ever get a hook on the incident.

Praying for a safe incident. Just hope everyone remembers, a tree can regrow, a house can be rebuilt, but don't take any chances when it comes to human life.

If you want some detailed info from the Rocky Mtn Region (R2) GACC (Geographic Area Coord Center) they have the fire up to 36,000 acres. The info is down towards the bottom.

Here's the National Outlook for this morning.

National Fire Activity Initial attack activity: Light (89 new fires)
New large fires: 3(*)
Large fires contained: 2
Uncontained large fires: ** 17
Area Command Teams committed: 0
NIMOs committed: 1
Type 1 IMTs committed: 3
Type 2 IMTs committed: 3 .
**Uncontained large fires include only fires being managed under a full suppression strategy.

Light Initial Attack activity is pretty common for this time of year. 89 fires really isn't that much. I've seen mornings during briefings where the activity was around 2,000 new fires the previous day. Hoping this summer doesn't get that bad, but the moistures this winter in the Rocky Mtn region might dictate otherwise.

Here's a nice up to date graphic of what's burned so far.

*Edit: Just saw at the bottom of the Inciweb site it was saying it's burning in beetle kill area. Yikes...Might explain the 300 ft flame lengths. Not much you can do in those conditions. Tankers are just going to slow fire growth and slow is being very generous. Crews won't be put in those areas. Having a Type 1 team will definitely help because they get resource priority (i.e. whatever they deem necessary they'll get in most circumstances.) Nice thing is it's still quite early in the season, so resources aren't stretched too thin just yet.

Yup... it's beetle-kill. If you're familiar with (the old) Savage Run wilderness area, a lot of it is like that, but with rocky terrain. Lots of deadfall that you can't get to to clear out.

A couple pics from tonight.





Fiancé taking pics:


I'm goin to bed, lol... nite all.

Oh yeah, I meant "970's" not "303's"... brain is shot from all the smoke, me thinks. Oh yeah, to everyone around us... sorry about the smoke. Keep THAT 25 foot from the entrance!