A wildfire raging near some of Colorado‘s most popular tourist sites grew suddenly more ferocious on Tuesday, forcing 32,000 people from their homes, prompting evacuations from the US air force academy and swallowing numerous houses at the edge of Colorado Springs.
From the vantage point of a command post about 10 miles (16 km) from the path of advancing flames, the entire community of Mountain Shadows, a north-west subdivision, appeared to be enveloped in an orange glow after dark.
“This is a fire of epic proportions,” Colorado Springs fire chief Rich Brown said as ash drifted down on the city, sirens wailed and the thick smell of smoke permeated the air.
Colorado governor John Hickenlooper flew into the city on Tuesday night by helicopter to meet with fire commanders and tour the fire zone first-hand. He noted that the blaze was one of at least a dozen burning throughout the state. Four people have died in Colorado wildfires so far this year.
“This is the worst fire season in the history of Colorado,” he said during an impromptu news conference, adding that from the air he saw many homes destroyed in a glowing landscape that looked “surreal”.
The Waldo Canyon Fire, which has roared through at least 6,200 acres of dry timber since Saturday, has grabbed attention for days because of its proximity to landmarks like the famed mountaintop of Pikes Peak and the air force academy.
The blaze claimed its first property losses on Tuesday as wind-driven flames swept over containment lines into Colorado’s second-most populous city, consuming an unknown number of homes on the town’s outskirts as authorities hurried to evacuate residents.
El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said 32,000 people had been evacuated, and an air force academy spokesman said the evacuation zone included two communities of single-family homes on academy grounds housing civilian and military personnel and their families.
“We are in a very critical situation now. Unfortunately we do have structures and homes that are burning in the northwest corner of Colorado Springs. We have mandatory evacuation over a considerable area,” fire information officer Rob Deyerberg said.
A mushroom cloud of gray, black and brown smoke, topped by billowing, white cumulus clouds, rose nearly 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) into the sky and hung over the area as residents scrambled to heed evacuation orders.
The sudden closure of service stations along with other businesses, leaving fleeing motorists unable to fill up their cars, added to a sense of urgency as roads filled with traffic.
Columns of vehicles carrying evacuees and hastily packed belongings stretched bumper-to-bumper for miles, crawling slowly southward out of town along Interstate 25.
Closer to the blaze, which has been fanned by winds blowing into the southern Rockies from the prairies to the east, trees were visibly twisting from the heat of the flames.
“It’s a very hostile environment out there,” fire information officer Anne Rys-Sikora said.
Asked how quickly the fire was spreading after the latest flare-up on Tuesday afternoon, incident commander Rich Harvey said, “If I gave acreage right now, it would be wrong in five minutes. It’s growing.”
Hickenlooper said he was consulting with Pentagon officials. The air force academy issued a statement saying the military was preparing to dispatch up to 25 more helicopters to join the firefighting effort.
Authorities earlier said that half of the fleet of eight Air Force C-130 cargo planes equipped as air tankers were already at work, dropping flame-retardant chemicals over the blaze.
Fire takes ferocious turn as blaze reaches state’s popular tourist sites and forces evacuations of air force academy.