well, the last week has been intersting. My Mom and Stepdad live in Colorado Springs, butt up against the Foothills, so most of you can guess where this is going. Went down last Sat for a visit, and noticed a plume of smoke, so called it in (along with hundreds of others). It developed quickly into a large blaze, but was 4 miles away and several valleys away from their house. All that changed Tuesday. My Mom called to see if we could help pre-evacuate, but before I got 30 minutes down the road it had gone to a full blown evacuation. By the time I got there, they had managed 1 carload, and every intersection west of I-25 was blocked by police. I managed to get past to meet my parents at a meeting place we had picked, but they never made it. I was then stuck with 300 other cars on a dead end road, and sat around for the next 2 hours waiting to evacuate rather than help with evacuations. Well after a while, I noticed the fire come over the top of a ridgeline like, well, literally WILDFIRE, and within minutes a plateau full of houses to the south was completely aflame. To say it looked like Dantes Inferno was an understatement. I was convinced that their house, which was trapped between the fire that had already burnt the Flying W Ranch to the ground and the fire wrapping around to the north towards the Air Force Academy, was already burning. We finally had an old rancher who cut through his fence and led a convoy of about 100 cars through the Air Force Academy property on a fire road through the woods, and I think the guards at the Academy were a bit suprised to see us come pouring out of the woods 300 feet from the South Gate!!!
Well, for the rest of the night, I watched what looked like a lava flow and fire engulf all of the western edge of the Springs, with sirens everywhere and a mix of flashing lights and flare ups all over the hills. I missed the next day when they called in C130s to make low speed passes through the canyons, dumping 3000 gallons at a pass versus the 1000 that the dedicated fire bombers usually run. We've been waiting since then to find out if the Waldo Canyon fire did to my Moms neighborhood what it did to Mountain Shadows and Flying W, but the fireline came within 1200 feet, but the fire crews managed to save the whole subdivision! They got word last night that they could move in, and are back home now, but I think with bit of a weather eye toward the ridgeline across the street from their front porch, which is now nothing but blackened stumps. Surely a thing of beauty, evil beauty nonetheless, to watch up close, but nature in action, and sometimes when nature and man get too close, she reminds us to back off a little....
