Fort Carson fire consumes 6,500 acres

A fire that burned more than seven miles across Fort Carson and jumped the post's eastern fence started on a training range as it was being used by soldiers, officials at the post said.

When firefighters arrived Tuesday morning, it covered just three acres. The weather swiftly overmatched anything firefighters could do, stoking the flames with 25 mph winds amid summerlike temperatures.

"It moved rapidly," Fort Carson Fire Chief Glen Silloway said.

Flames shot as high as 12 feet as the fire raced through an area of the post directly west of Fountain that hadn't been burned in nearly two decades.


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"It jumped some paved roads," Silloway said.

Fire threatened buildings and prompted evacuations in a sparsely populated swath of land sandwiched between Fort Carson and Interstate 25.

The main evacuations were at a pair of gravel pits off Charter Oak Ranch Road, where firefighters established a line blocking flames from spreading farther east.

The Ray Nixon power plant, a mile south of the fire, kept operating normally, but Colorado Springs Utilities fire crews spent Tuesday spraying coal piles with water, a Utilities spokesman said.

By evening the fire had consumed 6,500 acres and was expected to keep growing. Silloway said more than 100 firefighters, a pair of helicopters and a firefighting plane were working to contain the blaze and had ringed 10 percent of it by 5:30 p.m. A heavy air tanker was expected to join the fight today.

Before dawn Tuesday, the National Weather Service had issued a "red flag" warning for El Paso County, saying that warm temperatures and high winds meant extreme fire danger.

The high temperature Tuesday hit 70 degrees, two degrees shy of a record set in 1921, the weather service said. The wind and heat was compounded by an ongoing drought, with snowfall this year more than 16 inches below average.

It could have been worse.

The fire consumed an area that contains the post's ammunition storage facility.

Firefighters were able to keep it from going up as soldiers moved trucks carrying ammunition to safer areas.

Through the day, the fire spewed massive plumes of smoke that could be seen from downtown Colorado Springs and led to 911 calls in the city.

"There's pretty good plumes of smoke. It seems like the fire is changing direction a lot," Fountain police Lt. Mike Haley said.

The exact cause hasn't been determined, but it wouldn't take much to turn the wind-whipped and tinder-dry grassland south of the post's airfield into an inferno. Since it started in a training area that was being used, the fire was likely caused by people.

Fort Carson spokeswoman Dee McNutt said she didn't know if weapons were being used on the range when the fire started. She said the area is not normally used for live-fire training.

McNutt said post officials were hoping to contain enough of the flames to begin examining the fire's cause today.

Small fires on ranges are common during live-fire training. Last week, when soldiers from the post's 4th Brigade Combat Team used nearby ranges to ready themselves for Iraq, machine gun fire and mortar blasts started a few small fires that went out on their own.

North of the fire on Tuesday, soldiers were firing on a rifle range.
Silloway said the post does modify training when the chance of fire is high. But with wartime demands, "training doesn't stop," he said.

The fire showed no signs of stopping Tuesday night.

Siloway said with winds continuing to blow and little humidity in the air, the blaze was expected to grow.

Today could be worse.

The weather service has issued another red flag warning: "A combination of strong winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures will create explosive fire growth potential."

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Call Roeder at 636-0240