June 27, 2012

A growing wildfire in Colorado has breached perimeter lines and moved into the city of Colorado Springs, forcing more than 32,000 people to evacuate, including residents of the nearby U.S Air Force Academy. Driven by winds of up to 65 miles (104 kilometers) per hour, the fire has burned across some 6,200 acres (2,509 hectares). Officials do not know how many houses have been destroyed. Heat and flames are far too intense to fully assess the damage. The fire began on June 23 near Waldo Canyon in the Pike National Forest. At least 1,000 firefighters are battling the wildfire, which is only 5 percent contained. Colorado Springs Fire Chief Richard Brown described the blaze as a “firestorm of epic proportions.”

Smoke obscures the horizon as the High Park Fire in Colorado continues to burn acres of forest, June 2012. Copyright NOAA.

Throughout the western United States, firefighters have worked for days in record high temperatures, battling fires fueled by high winds and years of drought. Much of Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming are under official warning of extreme fire danger. A wildfire in Utah–the 60-square-mile (155-square-kilometer) Wood Hollow Fire near Indianola–has destroyed at least 56 structures and left 1 person dead. A second fire in Colorado–the 136-square-mile (352-square-kilometer) High Park Fire–has destroyed more than 250 structures and killed a 62-year-old woman. Over the last 24 hours, a wildfire in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in western Wyoming has grown from about 300 acres (120 hectares) to 2,000 acres (809 hectares).

(World Book map; map data © MapQuest.com, Inc.)

The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reports that there are 29 large active wildfires being fought in 7 western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The nation is experiencing “a super-heated spike on top of a decades-long warming trend,” announced Derek Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the Asheville, North Carolina-based National Climatic Data Center.

Additional World Book articles:

• Forest
• Forest Service
• Weather 2011 (a Back in Time article)
• Why Forests Need to Burn (a special report)