Fires

It's been a week since the Fourmile Canyon fire broke out outside of Boulder and it's now 100 percent contained. You never know what they mean when they say something like that. The flames might be out, but I'm sure there are still hot spots and smoldering embers. The initial report of how the fire started was that a truck crashed into a propane tank. It turned out that the fire was caused by some embers in someone's fire pit and sadly the fire pit belonged to a former volunteer firefighter. He was burning brush in the fire pit several days before the fire started, and in spite of dousing the fire pit with water and turning the ash, the winds somehow reignited the embers and the fire spread. The whole story is sad when you think about it because you don't expect this to happen to a 71-year-old man and a former firefighter. It was just a case of bad luck.

The Fourmile Canyon fire wasn't the only fire in the area, surprisingly. On Sunday a fire broke out outside of Loveland, which is about 36 miles north of Boulder. I think as of right now that fire is about 20 percent contained and fortunately the winds have been calm enough to keep it from spreading too far too fast. We're expecting more winds later this week, so hopefully they can contain it a little more before that happens. As it turns out, this fire was caused by another person who was burning brush in a fire pit. Although the Boulder fire sounds like a horrible accident, this fire sounds like a horrible lapse in judgment. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't think it would be a good idea to burn anything a week after another wildfire burned 6,000+ acres and destroyed about 160 homes.

And to keep things interesting, a smaller fire broke out in a park in Arvada. That was small enough to contain within a few hours. That fire was caused by a family playing with model rockets. Apparently a rocket went out of control and landed in the grass and the grass caught fire.

Hopefully we've seen the last of the fires this season. And to keep the rest of the state safe, I think from now on people should just stay home and maybe read a book until we get our first snowfall. It's far too dangerous out there!