LOVELAND, Colo, Aug 1, (AP): A person was killed in one of several wildfires threatening heavily populated areas of the Colorado foothills, authorities said Wednesday, as almost 100 large blazes burned across the western US.
The death came in a fire near the town of Lyons that blackened more than two square miles (six square kilometers) by Wednesday afternoon, authorities said. The person's remains were discovered in one of five homes that burned, Boulder County Sheriff Curtis Johnson said without providing further details.
Though listed as zero percent contained, the Stone Canyon Fire was not growing significantly Wednesday as 150 firefighters battled the flames, Johnson said. It was one of several large fires burning along Colorado's Front Range, a densely populated corridor that includes Denver and stretches roughly 80 miles (130 kilometers) along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains.
A fire at the edge of the Denver metro area west of the small town of Conifer triggered evacuation orders for about 575 houses from several subdivisions overnight Tuesday. That fire was less than one square mile (2.5 square kilometers) as of midday Wednesday but was expected to grow with temperatures forecast to reach nearly 100 degrees (38 Celsius).
A plane was dropping fire retardant and four helicopters were dropping water from a nearby reservoir on that fire. It was burning in steep terrain, making it hard to combat from the ground, said Mark Techmeyer with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.
"This fire is not an easy fight. The terrain is treacherous,” he said.
A third large fire burned more than 10 square miles (27 square kilometers) west of the town of Loveland, where 4,000 people remained under evacuation orders.
Loveland-area resident Becca Walter said her parents, who also live in the area, sent her a photo of flames climbing a nearby ridge Wednesday morning. They moved their eight horses to a friend’s ranch before evacuating to Walter’s house. She worried her parent's house could be lost.
"You can rebuild a house, and you can rebuild a barn, but there are lot of memories in them that you can’t rebuild,” she said
Yet another fire ignited Wednesday afternoon and prompted evacuation orders southwest of Boulder in the Gross Reservoir area. Two structures burned - at least one of them a house - and two firefighters suffered unspecified injuries, officials aid.