By John C. Ensslin
Rocky Mountain News (Denver)
Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
Cooler, cloudy weather Sunday created a much-needed break for firefighters battling four major blazes in Colorado and Wyoming.
But fire crews are concerned that hot, windy weather forecast today for the Western Slope could undo some of their work there.
Fire officials reported complete containment of two fires and significant progress on two others.
The greatest improvement came at the Cool Broth Fire in a canyon inside the Rio Grande National Forest in Saguache County. After a seesaw battle over the weekend, fire crews reported the 250-acre fire was 70 percent contained.
Earlier, fire officials had thought they had Cool Broth on the run, but then it jumped the line at several points, said Larry Helmerick, spokesman for the Rocky Mountain Coordination Center. And Sunday morning, the fire was down to about 30 percent contained.
“That’s a significant drop in containment,” Helmerick said.
At its peak, one fire commander described the fire as “extremely resistant to control, with a high rate of spread.”
By day’s end, however, the fire was sufficiently contained that crews allowed about 200 people who had been evacuated to return to their homes.
Elsewhere in Colorado, fire crews were gaining control over the largest fire in the state, the Mato Vega Fire in the San Luis Valley.
By late Sunday, the 13,780-acre blaze was reported as 50 percent contained.
About 542 people have been involved in combating the blaze at a cost of about $2.23 million, Helmerick said.
The Jolley Mesa Fire, which scorched 581 acres about four miles southeast of Silt, was reported to be 100 percent contained. But Helmerick said hot weather could reignite that blaze.
“The potential for growth is still a concern,” Helmerick said. “Even though we’ve contained it, we’re still concerned about the forecast.”
Fire crews along the Colorado-Wyoming border also reported 100 percent containment of the Isabelle fire, which had burned 1,200 acres, mostly within the Medicine Bow National Forest.
Dry weather has left much of the Rocky Mountain region under some type of fire weather watch, Helmerick said.
Seventeen areas were under a high fire danger, 30 were listed at a very high danger and 10 were classified as extreme danger.