Sadness in Colorado as widespread as smoke

Jonni McCoy saw flames in her rearview mirror as she drove away from her home and the fire that eventually consumed her Colorado Springs neighborhood.

By Chris Schneider, Getty Images

Smoke from the Waldo Canyon fire drapes the foothills Wednesday in Colorado Springs.

By Chris Schneider, Getty Images

Smoke from the Waldo Canyon fire drapes the foothills Wednesday in Colorado Springs.

She lost her home, her grandmother's furniture and everything else she hadn't stored across town when officials started warning her about the fires crisscrossing her state Saturday.

Officials don't know how many houses have been destroyed in Colorado's Waldo Canyon Fire, which has forced the mandatory evacuation of what the Associated Press reported was more than 32,000 people from the Colorado Springs area. They tell stories of hurried escapes, tall flames engulfing homes and thick smoke that makes breathing and seeing almost impossible. The anxiety is palpable, the sadness as widespread as the smoke.

"It just roared right through the whole section of town," said McCoy, 54, of the fire she witnessed as she fled Tuesday. "It was like mayhem. People were just running. It was gridlock trying to get out. You couldn't see more than 15 to 20 feet in front of you. It was just this brown haze smoke that just descended upon you."

McCoy, her husband, Beau, daughter, Jessica, 20, and dog, Mowgli, fled to a friend's home across town. They're living in the basement for now.

On Tuesday night, McCoy, an author of books on personal finance, was on Facebook and saw a picture of her neighborhood. Her house was gone.

"It was horrifying," she said. "It's hard to believe it's real."

Lindsey Fredrick grasped frantically for clothes and rushed her three children out of their Green Mountain Falls home when police told her she had 20 minutes to get out Saturday.

A day earlier, the fire wasn't that bad. She and her husband, David, didn't imagine they would be in a Red Cross shelter in Colorado Springs with only a few important papers and belongings by Tuesday.

"I'm definitely anxious about what the damage will be and if we'll be able to make it back," Fredrick, 29, said. "It's definitely stressful. All of our material possessions are there. The kids are antsy and stressed out because they are in an unfamiliar setting."

She described a calm scene at the shelter, where people wearing hospital masks smelled of ash. Dark smoke plumes hung outside.

Her family's evacuation separated them for days and took them across three shelters. Fredrick wasn't worried about the fire when her husband left Saturday morning to run a quick errand. When he tried to return home, police had blocked off the roads. Three days passed before they were reunited.

By David Zalubowski, AP

Onlookers watch from a field by Coronado High School as smoke rises from a wildfire burning near Colorado Springs on Wednesday.

Officers led Fredrick and her children, Sam, 2, Sid, 4, and Lilly, 10, through a cloud of smoke and into a car. They went to a shelter in Woodland Park for about an hour, then to one in Divide where they spent three nights, she said. On Monday, Fredrick posted an ad on Craigslist and paid someone to drive her to Colorado Springs, where her husband was staying with a friend.

"There are a lot of Red Cross volunteers who are trying to keep our spirits up," she said. "I haven't seen too many people cry. Most people are mellow. I guess they are just dealing with it."

Catherine Barde, a Red Cross spokeswoman in Colorado Springs, said the organization has four shelters in the area and that hundreds of people have come through the doors.

Heather Hendricks, 25, spent most of Wednesday afternoon trying to persuade her father to leave her parents' Colorado Springs home. The house has been in their family for 50 years, but now it is in a mandatory evacuation zone. "There's no convincing him to leave unless the fire is lapping at the door," she said.

Hendricks, her mother and brother saw flames engulf a home 4 miles from their house Tuesday as they drove past. "There was a huge wall of smoke," said Hendricks, who was visiting from Denver. "It was a surreal experience."

On Wednesday afternoon, she and her brother watched as helicopters circled their neighborhood and black smoke neared. She was still hoping her father would leave.

"Everybody is just getting ready to get out," she said. "I'm just praying."

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10,000 still displaced in raging Colorado wildfire

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) – Making steady progress Saturday against the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history, crews kept a wary eye on weather that was getting warmer and drier as National Guard troops were deployed to help local police get things back to normal.

By Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Destroyed homes sit beside homes left untouched by fire in a neighborhood affected by the Waldo Canyon fire on Saturday in Colorado Springs.

By Spencer Platt, Getty Images

Destroyed homes sit beside homes left untouched by fire in a neighborhood affected by the Waldo Canyon fire on Saturday in Colorado Springs.

"The weather is making progress in a bad direction. Hotter, drier, with a chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Winds will shift from one direction to another," said Incident Commander Rich Harvey.

The 26-square-mile Waldo Canyon fire was 45 percent contained by Saturday afternoon. It was one of many burning across the West, including eight in Utah and a fast-growing blaze in Montana that forced residents in several small communities to leave.

About 1,200 personnel and six helicopters were fighting the Waldo Canyon fire, and authorities said they were confident they'd built good fire lines in many areas to stop flames from spreading.

"Crews made progress all around the fire,'" said Harvey, who was cautiously optimistic. "The fire potential is still very, very high. It's extreme and explosive."

Two bodies were found in the ruins of one house, one of almost 350 destroyed in this city 60 miles south of Denver. The victims' names haven't been released. Police Chief Pete Carey said Saturday afternoon the approximately 10 people who had been unaccounted for had now been located.

Police did not expect to discover other victims in the rubble.

More than 150 National Guard soldiers and airmen helped Colorado Springs police staff roadblocks and patrol streets. Carey said Saturday the presence of military personnel will allow his department to resume normal police work in the rest of the city.

About 10,000 people remain evacuated, down from more than 30,000 at the fire's peak.

The mood was light as evacuees filtered back into an unscathed neighborhood of winding streets and split-level homes within an easy walk of the burned area.

High school counselor Pat Allen and her husband, Vic Miller, were all smiles less than five minutes after returning to their tri-level home on a quiet cul-de-sac.

"I'm just wanting to kiss the house, dance with the neighbors", Allen said.

Their house didn't smell of smoke. Their electricity was out for two or three days but the popsicles in their freezer didn't melt, she said.

Around the corner, retiree Nina Apsey wandered in search of eight small, solar-powered lights that somebody had taken from her yard during the evacuation.

"I'm assuming it was vandalism," she said.

Prized possessions still piled into the Hyundai sport-utility vehicle in her garage included caribou antlers and antelope and deer head mounts. As flames bore down, she'd also taken a small ceramic cowboy statue. Her late husband taught her how to hunt. He resembled the cowboy, she said.

She wasn't too perturbed about her missing lights because nothing else was touched.

"If that's the worst that happened to me, I'm blessed," she said.

On Sunday people whose homes were burned will be allowed to tour the affected areas. Authorities said some residences would be cordoned off with police tape, and people would not be allowed beyond that point.

The home of Janine Herbertson and her 15-year-old daughter, Tessa Konik, remained unburned amid 150 others that were destroyed, said Herbertson as they ate lunch outside a Red Cross shelter.

Even so, "I'm afraid to go on the tour tomorrow and see our neighborhood in ruins," she said.

Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the fire that broke out on June 23, and which so far has cost $8.8 million to battle. Dangerous conditions had kept them from beginning their inquiry.

Among the fires elsewhere in the West:

• Utah: Residents were sifting through the ashes of more than 50 houses destroyed by a central Utah wildfire. Homeowners were allowed to return Saturday to Indianola along Utah's scenic Route 89. In all, eight wildfires are burning across Utah.

• Montana: Authorities in eastern Montana ordered the evacuation of several communities Saturday as the Ash Creek Complex fires, which has burned more than 70 homes this week, consumed another 72 square miles. The blaze grew to 244 square miles overnight.

• Wyoming: A wind-driven wildfire in a sparsely populated area of southeastern Wyoming exploded from eight square miles to nearly 58 square miles in a single day, and an unknown number of structures have burned. About 200 structures were considered threatened.

• Idaho: A fast-moving 1,000-acre wildfire in eastern Idaho that destroyed 66 homes and 29 outbuildings was expected to be contained Saturday. Some 1,000 residents were evacuated; it was unclear when they would be allowed back.

• Colorado: The last evacuees from the High Park Fire in northern Colorado have been allowed to return home as crews get closer to full containment. The 136-square-mile fire killed one resident and destroyed 259 houses, a state record until the fire near Colorado Springs destroyed 346 homes. In western Colorado, the 18-square-mile Pine Ridge Fire was 10 percent contained.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Colorado wildfires ruthlessly march on

An earlier version of this story misstated the size of the High Park wildfire.

By RJ Sangosti, Denver Post via AP

The Waldo Canyon blaze destroyed much of the Mountain Shadows subdivision in Colorado Springs.

By RJ Sangosti, Denver Post via AP

The Waldo Canyon blaze destroyed much of the Mountain Shadows subdivision in Colorado Springs.

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — As flames from a destructive, uncontrolled wildfire licked the southwestern end of their campus, more than 1,000 cadets arrived at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs on Thursday to begin their studies.

Housing units in the southern part of the 18,500-acre academy had been evacuated Tuesday as a precaution, and a 10-acre fire briefly flared in that area Wednesday, academy spokesman Harry Lundy said.

Processing of the 1,045 "doolies," as freshmen are known, went smoothly at the north end of campus despite the looming Waldo Canyon wildfire. Evacuees are being housed at nearby military facilities, he said.

President Barack Obama will tour wildfire-stricken Colorado Friday, where thousands of people have been displaced by out-of-control blazes.

The president's visit comes as about half of the active federal firefighting resources are in Colorado, where extremely hot and dry conditions have triggered several large wildfires during the last month.

Nationally, firefighters were battling 41 major fires Thursday, the National Interagency Fire Center reported. Hot weather, lightning strikes and dry, unpredictable winds pushed the number of fires to 242, 11 of them defined as large by the fire center. The definition varies depending on terrain and danger to human habitation, said Coleen Decker at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.

There were 2,864 firefighters at work, aided by 107 helicopters dumping fire retardant and water. The firefighting cost for the year so far: $119.8 million, according to the center.

The weekend will bring little relief to Colorado Springs, Decker said. Temperatures might dip slightly from 103 degrees to 100, she said. Flame-spreading winds are forecast to be weaker, but thunderstorms could light new fires .

Colorado, with three major blazes, has the worst of it. The Waldo Canyon wildfire has burned more than 28 square miles, including neighborhoods in Colorado Springs. Mayor Steve Bach said 346 homes have been incinerated, making it the most destructive fire in state history.

Northwest of Fort Collins, firefighters said they were getting ahead of the 136-square-mile High Park fire that killed a woman and destroyed at least 257 homes after being sparked by lighting June 9. The fire was 75% contained and could be under control early next week, said Jim Toomey of the Larimer County sheriff's office.

Near Boulder, containment of the Flagstaff wildfire west of the city grew to 30%. The fire burned 300 acres, but 26 families that were evacuated Tuesday when the fire began were allowed back Thursday evening.

The fire was "one ridge away from impacting the city," said Dan Rowland, a spokesman for the Flagstaff wildfire management team. "That would have been a game-changer."

"We are on heavy alert going forward," he said. "We're watching it every day."

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Hughes also reports for the Fort Collins Coloradoan. Weise reported from San Francisco.Contributing: Associated Press

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