Colorado blaze too dangerous to assess damage

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A towering Colorado wildfire destroyed dozens of houses overnight, though the intensity of the blaze kept officials Wednesday from being able to fully assess the damage to the state's second-largest city.

The fire, which doubled in size overnight to about 24 square miles, has forced mandatory evacuations for more than 32,000 residents, Colorado Springs emergency management director Brett Waters said. Among those urgently evacuated Tuesday evening were residents at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

AP Photo/David Zalubowski

Motorists stop to take photographs along the southbound lanes of Interstate 25 as a wildfire rolls through housing subdivisions in the mountains north and west of Colorado Springs, Colo., on Wednesday. The fire has forced the evacuation of more than 32,000 residents of the communities west of, and now in Colorado Springs proper.

Steve Cox, an aide to Mayor Steve Bach, said Wednesday morning that the blaze has consumed dozens of houses. A more precise figure wasn't available because of the intensity of the fire.

Heavy smoke and ash billowed from the mountain foothills west of the city. Bright yellow and orange flames flared in the night, often signaling another home lost to the Waldo Canyon Fire, which is the No. 1 priority for the nation's firefighters.

"It was like looking at the worst movie set you could imagine," Gov. John Hickenlooper said after flying over the 9-square-mile fire late Tuesday. "It's almost surreal. You look at that, and it's like nothing I've seen before."

Flames crested a ridge above the scenic, 28-square-mile Air Force Academy campus on Tuesday, and the school told more than 2,100 residents to evacuate 600 households in one housing area.

By Wednesday, the smoke appeared farther away, said Lt. Col. John Bryan, an academy spokesman.

It wasn't immediately clear how close the fire was to the academy's signature building, the aluminum, glass and steel Cadet Chapel. The chapel dorms, classrooms and other central buildings are clustered in the northwest quadrant of the 28-square-mile campus.

More than 1,000 incoming freshman are scheduled to report to the academy as scheduled on Thursday, but the day's events have been moved to a campus building farther from the fire, Bryan said.

About 1,500 other cadets who are attending summer classes would take shelter off campus with civilian or military families if the threat worsens, Bryan said.

The academy has its own fire department, which trains extensively for threats such as this, Bryan said.

"We're doing everything we can and obviously taking the necessary precautions to keep everyone safe," he said.

Colorado Springs Fire Chief Richard Brown called the blaze " a firestorm of epic proportions."

Christine Williams and her daughter Serina saw flames consuming grass just 30 yards from their northwest Colorado Springs apartment complex when they fled.

"It was pretty close," Serina Williams said Wednesday. "It was too close for comfort, that's for sure. It's like we've had our life swiped out from underneath us."

Sarah Safranek was in tears as she sought information about her house.

"Right now I'd rather not know," she said.

Thunderstorms are expected near the blaze in the afternoon, but incident commander Rich Harvey says they could bring unpredictable winds that would hinder firefighters' efforts near the city of 419,000 people.

The fire is about 5 percent contained, Harvey said.

Throughout the interior West, firefighters have toiled for days in searing, record-setting heat against fires fueled by prolonged drought. Most, if not all, of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana were under red flag warnings, meaning extreme fire danger.

The nation is experiencing "a super-heated spike on top of a decades-long warming trend," said Derek Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Elsewhere in Colorado, the 136-square-mile High Park Fire has destroyed 257 homes, authorities said. That fire was triggered by lightning June 9.