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Subscribe to RSSWatch the cellphone video taken by Doug and Kimberley Gulick and their children as they barely escaped a raging wildfire.
CONIFER, Colo. -- Colorado will likely suspend prescribed burns like the one blamed for the deadly wildfire near Denver, Gov. John Hickenlooper said Wednesday as video of one family’s harrowing escape from flames emerged.
Investigators were trying to determine whether the fire, which is still at zero containment, reignited from a controlled burn that was meant to reduce fuel for a fire.
Hickenlooper said he doesn't blame some of the 900 evacuated homeowners in the mountains southwest of Denver for being angry.
"Their houses have been destroyed. Their lives have been changed forever. It's not their fault," Hickenlooper told KOA radio.
Joe Duda, deputy state forester, apologized for the blaze. “This is heartbreaking, and we are sorry,” Duda said in a prepared statement. “Despite the best efforts of the Colorado State Forest Service to prevent this very kind of tragic wildfire, we now join Colorado in hoping for the safety of those fighting a large fire, and mourning the loss of life and property … and we hope for the safety of crews as they continue to fight the fire.”
On Tuesday, Boulder County officials suspended prescribed burns for the time being. The county had been carrying out prescribed burns on county land, the Denver Post reported, while dozens of farmers and ranchers were doing the same on their properties.
On Wednesday, a cellphone video taken as Doug Gulick and Kimberly Olson drove two cars out of their neighborhood showed the swiftness of approaching flames. Their son, Caleb, 13, shot the video.
“What is she stopping for,” one child cries frantically from Gulick's back seat when Olson's car slows as the family drives through smoke-filled streets. Gulick is heard trying to reassure the child they will be OK. The couple told the Denver Post they did not receive a warning about the wildfire encroaching on their neighborhood.
David Zalubowski / AP
One home stands untouched at left Tuesday while another home at right smolders after burning near Conifer, Colo.
Meanwhile, some 400 firefighters from several states were focusing on building containment lines around the 6-square-mile wildfire, which broke out Monday. Until now, the fire's erratic pattern has forced firefighters to focus on protecting homes, not stopping the burn.
"We're going to try to take a bite out of this fire," Jefferson County sheriff's spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said.
As crews dig lines around the fire's perimeter, a search team is using dogs to look for a woman missing in the fire zone. Her home was among 27 destroyed or damaged in the blaze.
The Colorado State Forest Service conducted a 35-acre burn in the region Thursday — on land belonging to Denver's water authority — said forest service spokesman Ryan Lockwood.
Crews finished the effort Friday and patrolled the perimeter daily to ensure it was out, Lockwood said. It was during Monday's patrol that a state forest service crew spotted the wildfire — also on Denver Water property — and alerted authorities, Lockwood said.
It wasn't clear if the wildfire was inside the controlled burn zone.
The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office will determine the cause of the blaze, while the Colorado State Forest Service was conducting its own review, Lockwood said.
Stacy Chesney, a spokeswoman for Denver Water, said the agency was "trying to be proactive" to protect water supplies from soil runoff caused by deforestation.
The area has several watersheds that feed metropolitan Denver and is several miles from the location of a 2002 fire, one of Colorado's worst, which destroyed 133 homes and 466 outbuildings over 215 square miles.
Protocols for controlled fires include monitoring them until they are determined to be cold — meaning nothing is at risk for reigniting, said Roberta D'Amico, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Fire officials normally check weather, terrain and other factors to create a burn plan and alert municipal authorities, D'Amico said.
Carole Walker, director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, said state agencies have limited immunity for performing regular duties.
"They have immunity on the duties of managing a forest. It would have to be determined they were negligent or acting outside their duties" for property owners to seek compensation, Walker said.
Officials found the bodies of a couple at a destroyed home, said Daniel Hatlestad of the Jefferson County Incident Management Team. They were identified as Sam Lamar Lucas, 77, and Linda M. Lucas, 76. A cause of death was pending for both.
On Tuesday, evacuees formed a long line to see a list of damaged properties posted by the Red Cross at Conifer High School. Residents groaned when Hatlestad told them it wasn't known when the fire would be contained.
"I understand that it's a difficult situation, but it's our house, and we're in the target zone," said John Ryan, 47.
Hatlestad said the fire burned so hot that it melted farm and construction machinery, creating a silver stream of molten metal.
The fire threat in much of Colorado has grown during an unusually dry and warm March. On March 18, a grass fire charred 37 square miles in eastern Colorado and injured three firefighters.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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I asked the forest service last year if I could remove a beetle kill tree near my land before the larvae hatched out and flew off to infest new trees, but they said no. Said they didn't have the manpower to take care of so much forest.
I guess letting people take out dead trees (at their expense) is too much bother for them.
I believe it's against the law for them to let you cut standing trees on federal land.
Mother nature took care of your forest for thousands of years. Where we all went wrong was in suppressing those early low level fires for the last 100 years that would have done exactly what you wanted.
Now we are saddled with a choice, try to reduce fuel on our terms or wait for mother nature to choose a hot dry day of her own. Which would be worse?
Even with this tragedy, we have to continue to reduce fuel on our terms or we will face unthinkable disasters come mid summer, every summer, for decades. I wish the Governor understood that it is ignorant knee jerk politics like his that got us here in the first place.
It wasn't knee-jerk politics that caused this. It was misunderstanding the role fire plays in the wilderness. Suppressing fire helped the logging industry, something that would have been strongly supported 100 yrs ago, but now we know the long-term consequences.
I don't blame the forest service for past mistakes, but not letting us reduce the fuel now is stupid.
Sure. Between natural causes, dumb-asses, and arsonists, we do not have enough fires to keep under-growth in check. Let's make some "controlled burns" around our "sparsely populated" areas. This is your "intelligent government" at it's finest.
You've obviously never walked in the western woods where a hundred years of dead and down fuel is piled up for mile after mile over millions of acres.
Government at its finest. Stop using a method that is proven to lessen the effects of forest fires because of a forest fire. Gotta love it.
If you lived here, you'd understand the need for controlled burns.
They have controlled burns where I live. 4 out of 6 have run wild an burned homes. My thing is if you don't know how to put them out, stop setting them until you learn. Simple math here.!!!
If you don't understand that stopping controlled burns only builds up the fuel load, you have no business living in areas with a fire ecology. Stop building houses in areas that have naturally burned for millennia.
I just don't understand why they were doing a controlled burn when we were in a fire alert due to the high winds....
The problem is that these homes are constructed in areas with lots of flashy fuels and often in steep terrain and there is no good way to protect them. It's not like in a city where a fire truck comes along and puts out the fire with a hose and its over.
Colorado has honest citizens fined and jailed for accidental fires but noone's held accountable when their professionals cause the fire. Guess the gov't is us vs them.
Well, the government's goin' to hold back on setting fires. I'm so relieved.
A few good lightning strikes on our beetle-killed dry tinder will make this tragedy look like a camp fire, kiddies.
Plus One to that. I hope the Colorado Governor will get the blame for that one because it's politics like his that got us here in the first place.
I have lived In Colorado for 20 years. They have done this over and over - "prescribed burns" in high winds and in deadly dry conditions. At Fort Carson. At Blodgett Peak. They never learn! They should be prosecuted and fired!
The people to blame are the people who thought we should and could put every wild fire out for the last 100+ years. If this fuel is this tricky I'd hate to see how it would burn on the hottest driest and windiest day of the year. Obviously the intention was to do this and have it contained before the winds showed up.
Yup. How many times has this happened now? The furher adventures of Park Ranger. Grandfathered in their jobs that they never could do. They are all lame. Now they carry guns. The US Forest Service has gone to hell. Now foreigners run the concessions at the National Parks. On top of that everything is way overpriced. To have a tent space is expensive much less a cabin. If they don't burn it down. We need reform now!
The only control you have on a fire in hot,dry, windy conditions is to not introduce an ignition source . After you do that all bets are off.
Beetle kill is often a result of fire suppression - too many trees grow per acre, trees are stressed, bugs infest them, and the fuel load grows thicker.
This is tragic, but think how much worse this could be if left up to mother nature to choose the worst, hottest, windiest day in August.
We need to undo the fuel loads and it is tricky, some will jump, the urban wildland interface is complex, people build homes in the woods and they sometimes will burn.
It is simply ignorant for the Governor to suggest we can continue to suppress fire in fuel loads 100+ years in the making. You don't get it both ways.
If done in a proper manner, commercial cutting has proven to be an effective and far safer means of controlling these issues.
Well this dead and down bug kill lodgepole pine fuel isn't really merchantable timber (profit wise) so what you end up with is the high value trees going out as a load of logs and the fuel load really still on the ground, least that's what I've seen 9 out of 10 times, but I wish it weren't so.
Extreme low humidity, forecast high winds, lack of manpower and the tinder-dry underbrush are all excuses any forest group will use to try to divert the blame from the fact that some supervisor made a stupid decision to let the burn go on schedule. Colorado is a matchbox waiting to go up in flames this year due to the dry winter. Prescribed or control burns should NEVER be planned when conditions are this bad. That is only common sense!
Springtime along the Front Range is always dry and windy. This year more so than ever. This past winter was drier than normal and it was just weeks ago we were experiencing "hurricane force" winds, with gusts over 65 mph. Approving any kind of burn this time of year is not only risky, but stupid.
It always amazes me when all the government backers come out of the woodwork when the morons in our gov't agencies screw up and cause untold death, damage, and just plain stupidity that they will not be held responsible for, nor prosecuted, for their dumb-ass actions that destroyed peoples lives. How many forest service employees have started fires that destroyed thousands of acres of forest, destroyed homes, killed people, not including wildlife, in the state of Colorado in the last 10 years? What stupid A-Hole would even ATTEMPT to start a "controlled" burn in 45+ mile an hour winds in a dry terrain??!! The state CANNOT be sued for damages!! NICE RACKET!! The people involved should be sued, fined, punished by prison sentences and given an education in logic and just plain anatomy about trying to pull your head out of your A--.
It always amazes me when the gov't backers come out of the woodwork to defend the A-holes that cause untold damage and problems for the tax payers. The Morons who would even "ATTEMPT" a "CONTROLLED " burn in dry terrain with 45+ mile per hour winds should be held responsible for all the damage done to homes, wildlife, and deaths, caused by just plain stupity! So, now we are told that the STATE " CANNOT" be sued for all of the destruction and deaths caused by Government Employees in the State's employ. NICE RACKET!! The persons responsible should be held liable, as well as the Management (if you can call them that), and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. How many Forest Service Employees have been responsible for fires that wreaked havoc and death to the state of Colorado in the last 10 years??!! Throw their stupid A---- in prison, make them learn anatomy, and maybe, just maybe, they all can learn how to pull their collective heads out of their collective A----!!!!