Fourmile Canyon

Colorado

The 2010 Fourmile fire began in a brush pit on a volunteer firefighter's own property, and nine of the homes it burned belonged to firefighters.

disasterhistorical

A fire pit on this canyon's slopes was left improperly extinguished. Days later, around ten in the morning, it reignited. The property belonged to a volunteer firefighter who had been burning brush there. Within minutes flames were moving through forest near Emerson Gulch. Humidity had dropped to seven percent. Winds were blowing fifteen miles an hour with gusts past forty. Flames ran twenty to fifty feet high. By late afternoon two tankers lifted off from an airport in Broomfield, each carrying two thousand gallons of retardant. Smoke hung over the whole Front Range northwest of Boulder. Thirty-five hundred people left their homes. Four hundred and thirty firefighters eventually worked the blaze, and nine of the destroyed houses belonged to firefighters who were out fighting it. The final count was six thousand one hundred eighty-one acres, about ten square miles. Of the four hundred seventy-four homes inside the fire's edge, a hundred and sixty-eight burned.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
Nine of the destroyed homes belonged to firefighters who were fighting the fire.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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