Favorable winds aid in battle on 700-acre blaze near Westcliffe
By DEBORAH FRAZIER
Rocky Mountain News (Denver, Colorado)
Copyright 2006 Denver Publishing Company
WESTCLIFFE, Colo. — Firefighters succeeded Thursday in holding back the 700-acre Tyndall Fire 100 miles southwest of Denver, even as afternoon wind gusts fanned embers into new outbreaks.
“The conditions are very bad, with the winds and the low humidity, but right now we’re holding it,” said Mike Kessler, the incident commander.
“We’ve had a lot of breaks and no homes have been damaged,” he said.
By evening, favorable winds helped firefighters achieve 50 percent containment of the fire.
“Things are looking good,” said Steve Segin, a Forest Service fire information officer. “Southwest flowing winds pushed the fire back onto itself. Everyone is feeling pretty good.”
The fire started Wednesday when high winds toppled a tree into a power line.
The downed line sparked and erupted into flames that raced through parched grasses.
Road crews from Custer and Fremont counties worked through the night with bulldozers and road graders to encircle the fire with broad swaths of upturned earth, he said. Engine crews, meanwhile, guarded a dozen homes near Cristo Vista.
“The fire was coming straight at us Wednesday night until the winds shifted,” said Colleen Jorge, who lives across the highway from the fire’s path. “The flames were like a knife that went straight up the road.”
Jorge and her neighbors had packed up to evacuate, but stayed at their homes after the winds shifted the flames away.
Fire crews saved four homes within the fire’s perimeter, said Ralph Bellah, forest information officer.
“I’m not going to unpack until Thursday,” said Jorge, a flight attendant who has lived in the rolling hills of pine and aspen forests since 1987. “The old-timers say they’ve never seen a fire like this here.”
As winds picked up in the afternoon, spirals of smoke from spot fires and dust from the dozers turned the sky gray as clouds moved in from the west. Fire bosses watched the sky and hoped for rain.
“Winds are up and they’re fluctuating,” said D.J. Chess, an assistant foreman on an engine crew. “We’ve mopped up the edges and we hope it won’t spread farther.”
About 120 people were on the fire lines and new crews were expected to arrive overnight, said Bellah.
The winds had grounded a chopper with water buckets and air tankers had been requested, he said.
“We got lucky on this because of the topography,” said Dennis Page, a division supervisor with the crews. “In some areas, there was just enough green and moisture to stop the fire.”