A lot of folks on Twitter, Facebook and via email, have been asking if I’m okay and whether the fires are anywhere near me, so I thought a post was in order.
First up – thanks to everyone who has been concerned. The short answer is that my house is not near any of the fire areas. Neither do any of my family here locally live in those areas. I do have friends who are close to fire areas, especially the new fire that has flared in Colorado Springs near the Garden of the Gods. I put together a map showing the wild fires relative to where I live (that’s it on the side there). Click it to zoom in. I basically built that by taking screen shots from this website.
The fire near Colorado Springs has forced 11,000 people to evacuate. Also, tourists are being forced from hotels. The area has a lot of tourist attractions including the Air Force Academy, the Garden of the Gods, Manitou Springs, Cave of the Winds, Pikes Peak, the list goes on and on. Estes Park has also seen evacuations and damage – this holds an entrance to the Rocky Mountain National Park and the famous Stanley Hotel.
The worst fire is the large red area in the upper left corner of my map Near Fort Collins. Here, 118 square miles have burned. Current count has 191 homes destroyed. According to a Reuters report I read, half of America’s firefighting fleet are here in Colorado trying to contain these fires. As of this writing, there are 8 fires blazing away. 🙁
Not helping is the fact we are having record high temperatures and no rain. On the local news, they keep throwing out containment percentages, which seem to fluctuate day to day. What was 65% contained yesterday, is 45% contained today.
The worst part of all of this has been the implication that maybe some of these fires were intentional – as in, arson. This blows my mind. What kind of fucked in the head would you have to be to do something like that?
~P
