The Waldo Canyon fire is now 5% contained. That does not sound like much but after two days of being in an uncontrolled status, 5% is better than nothing! As of last evening the fire had consumed 3600 acres and still no structures or lives lost. Four Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) C-130 aircraft are also assisting in battling the Waldo Canyon fire. They started dropping slurry today around 1 PM. (I just heard one fly over the house now. We live just north of the Colorado Springs Airport which is also used by Peterson AFB.)
While these C-130's have the ability to dump huge amounts of fire retardant onto the fire, they are also being used for the much larger fire up in Northern Colorado. That one has consumed over 80 thousand acres.
Tonight we had a wind shift and the smoke plume has shifted from the north to the east. We have a huge line of smoke coming from the fire travelling over the city and out to the east. It is just north of where we live. Pam and I went out to dinner this evening and I wish I would have brought my camera as we had a good unobstructed view of the latest day of this mess.
The fire fighters continue to be cajoling this fire into areas of the canyon that are uninhabited. So far they have been successful. However today they did have the fire crest a ridge and head towards the town of Crystola. They were able to get a bulldozer line from Hwy 24 up to a main ridge and build a break to move the fire away from the town. These guys have been pretty amazing at what they are doing. Hats off to the over 450 fire fighters that are on the line now and the officials are reporting that they will be upwards of 600 on the fire if not this evening, tomorrow for sure.
We had a fire pop up in Fountain, Co., just south of us and it was put out quickly. Fires are popping up all over the state now. Not sure if it is spontanous combustion because of the excessive heat wave we are having, carelessness by some or what? At last count we had 8 active fires going on in Colorado. The worse being the High Park fire.
Click on this link and you can see info on all the fires currently being tracked by this site. http://www.inciweb.org/state/6/
Here are a couple of pic's taken from outside our house. While they really do not do the fire justice, you can see the smoke trail.
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Nope, not clouds, smoke from the fire.
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