The Pine Gulch Fire, raging in Grand Junction, Colorado, has burned through more than 125,000 acres, making it the second largest wildfire in Colorado history.
Residents will likely see smoke from the west and southwest areas of the fire as it continues to burn fuels, but this is expected, the Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team said.
The Pine Gulch Fire was first reported on July 31 about 18 miles north of Grand Junction. It was caused by lightning.
“In the past two to three weeks, our fire danger has gone up and our activity has gotten pretty extreme,” said Lt. Micheal Evers of the Colorado Springs Fire Department.
It’s causing smoke to settle right here in Colorado Springs.
“Usually the mornings and the later evenings are when the smoke is likely going to be the biggest problem,”
“That’s when the atmosphere settles down a little bit, there is less wind, and the smoke has a chance to settle.”
The state’s 10 largest fires in history, ranked by acreage, are:
1. Hayman Fire (2002): 137,760 acres
2. Pine Gulch Fire (2020): 125,106 acres
3. Spring Fire (2018): 108,045 acres
4. High Park Fire (2012): 87,284 acres
5. Missionary Ridge Fire (2002): 72,962 acres
6. 416 Fire (2018): 54,000 acres
7. Bridger Fire (2008): 45,800 acres
8. Last Chance Fire (2012): 45,000 acres
9. Bear Springs/Callie Marie fires (2011): 44,662 acres
10. 117 Fire (2018): 42,795 acres
Day by day, the death toll and acreage total climb as fire officials deliver the grim news. A trio of fire complexes have combined to burn nearly a half million acres of California and the complexity of the situation has only been fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic according to Accuweather.
“In total, these fires have now burned over 771,000 acres,” CalFire Assistant Deputy Director Daniel Berlant said in an update on the statewide wildfires on Friday. That’s roughly the size of the state of New Jersey.
Throughout the state, the majority of the fires were ignited by a “historic lightning siege,” according to Jeremy Rahn, a spokesperson for CalFire:
“Friday evening, CalFire tweeted that under the extreme weather conditions, the growth of the SCU Lightning Complex and the LNU Lightning Complex had made California’s Top 20 Largest Wildfire List. The SCU Lightning Complex became the state’s 7th largest fire in the state’s history and the LNU Lighting Complex the 10th as of Friday.”
As if the infernos in Colorado, California or other states on the West weren’t enough of a problem, firefighting crews are historically undermanned in 2020 fire season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fires in Colorado (latest shots):
Fires in California (latest shots):
Latest documentation of Southwest fires and heatwave in Southwest:
Sources / Read more:
https://www.kktv.com/2020/08/15/how-the-wildfires-burning-in-colorado-affect-our-area/
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/19/us/california-fires-power-outages/index.html
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