UPI
DENVER — A volunteer Colorado firefighter is being investigated for not putting out a fire pit lit days before the state’s most destructive wildfire, authorities say.
The Fourmile fire was contained Monday night after burning for a week, consuming 6,181 acres and destroying 169 homes, The Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera reported.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office said authorities believe the last fire that was active in the pit prior to the Fourmile Fire blowing up was “a number of days before.”
“At that time, the property owner had made attempts to extinguish the fire by dousing it with water and stirring the ashes,” the Sheriff’s Office said in a release. “It is believed that the wind reignited the embers and blew them out of the fire pit, causing the fire to spread on Sept. 6.”
The male homeowner, a 71-year-old volunteer firefighter, has not been identified, and it has not been decided whether he faces criminal charges.
“He’s been very cooperative in the investigation,” Sheriff Cmdr. Rick Brough said. “He hasn’t tried to divert the investigation away from him.”
Indications are that “he was doing everything properly on the burn day,” Brough said.
A month of exceptionally dry and hot weather allowed the fires to happen, The Denver Post reported.
Federal fire meteorologist Tim Mathewson said rainfall in the foothills west of Boulder was only 25 percent to 50 percent of average for this time of year and temperatures were 2 to 4 degrees higher than average, the newspaper reported.
“The fire conditions haven’t changed at all. The likelihood that we will get a large fire remains elevated,” Mathewson said. “The only wild card is ignition.”
Meanwhile in Larimer County, a fire started by accident when a homeowner was burning grass and leaves destroyed two homes Sunday, KUSA-TV, Denver, reported.
“A resident was trying to burn a small pile of tree limbs near the driveway of his property, adjacent field, unfortunately when he lit the fire, it did spread quickly into the grass underneath and then spread into the field and some of the heavier fuels that we have out in their terrain,” Scott Pringle, deputy fire marshal with the Loveland Fire and Rescue Department, said.
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