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June 11, 2012 11:48 PM UTC

High Park Fire Open Thread

  • 17 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

This is becoming a big enough story that we thought you might like a place to comment. Here’s the latest from 9News:

The High Park Fire is now at 36,930 acres and growing significantly, with zero percent containment. Larimer County says 400 personnel are fighting the blaze. Monday afternoon, officials said at least 100 homes have been damaged or destroyed by the fire in the Rist Canyon area.

According to Larimer County, flames lept 15 to 20 feet in the air, with some flames shooting 300 feet into the sky. Very dry brush, timber and grasses are providing the fuel for this fire.

What Larimer County is calling a “very aggressive” and “hard to fight” fire is growing at 20 to 40 feet a minute.

Comments

17 thoughts on “High Park Fire Open Thread

  1. and my family has lots of allergy symptoms (headaches, runny nose, eye irritation). Asked around and others do too. We closed up the house and turned on the air and things seem better. Pretty sure it’s the smoke. My thoughts and prayers go out to those who live close to it. Please be careful.

      1. of all places.  I remember looking up from our campsite Saturday morning and thinking, oh shit that is big.   Massive plume behind us.  We weren’t evacuated, but my throat is pretty scratchy as the smoke and haze came in Saturday night and pretty much stayed around.  Saw lots of emergency vehicles whipping up 38 at all hours of the night on Saturday.  

          1. the unionized firefighters are only allowed to save a tea partiers house if another similar one somewhere else is allowed to burn to the ground.

      2. Why let a tragedy and crisis go to waste if there is some political partisan points he can score?  So people are worried, one death already, homes destroyed, pets and livestock no doubt killed.  But for Cory its all about the OPPORTUNITY to point fingers at political rivals and score cheap points.  So proud we should be of that man.

        1. and we should continue to ignore the need for a new fleet of tankers in the air because it would cost taxpayers money.

          What a fucking dickhead.

  2. I wanted to go out with my telescope tonight.  Looks like I can.

    I’m not gloating, we have our own damned problems with fires.

    Good luck to all of those in the fire zone.  And good luck to all of those who advocate “less government” explaining to the homeowners why these federal firefighters are bad guys…

    1. The Right is constantly accused of hyperbole yet the left uses this tactic most often. Just because we want to limit or abolish certain areas of government does not mean we want to limit and or abolish every area of government. Please stop painting with such a broad brush!

      The Federal Fire Fighters, themselves as individual humans are not bad guys. They are regular people trying to do good for society, themselves and their family. The real issue is the taxation funding of firefighters and its intersection with insurance and property rights. This is fairly in depth stuff and I don’t have the time to bring you up to speed.

      Study moral hazard and get back to me.

      1. that you are both highly intelligent and a very busy person.  We’ll try to keep up as you continue to blow our minds with your awesomeness.

      2. I can only hope that if your own house ever catches fire, the firefighters don’t sit there and discuss the intersection of insurance and property rights before they open the hydrants.

      3. Show us where in the budget Republicans responded with increased funding for the National Forest Service and new air tankers.

        My recollection is dicks like you wanted all of our national treasure to be spent chasing phantom WMD in Iraq so no one noticed how badly Bush botched 9/11.

        The two trillion dollars that will be wasted on Iraq is a clear indication that you have no idea what agencies need funding and investment and what agencies need to be reformed or eliminated.

        Obama asked Congress for authority streamline government and Kantor & Co blew him off.  How can you complain about inefficient government when you do nothing to solve the problem?  What a bunch of hogwash.

      4. please read “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” by Rajiv Chandrasekeran and then tell us why anyone should EVER trust a republican with money.

  3. So Sunday Denver was extremely hazy with the smoke from High Park.  Yesterday was a bit better.  Today looks like yesterday in terms of air clarity, but it smells like the fire’s next door.  It’s gotten through the building air system here at work – gonna be a special day for those with breathing problems in the metro.

    1. I was in Estes Park Saturday for the wool market, and we could see the fire way down the Boulder Turnpike. It had only started that morning. And you could see it clearly from the Estes Park fairgrounds. It looked like it was only over the next ridge from the Big Thompson canyon (which it might have been – not 100% familiar with the geography there). I can only imagine what it looked like on Sunday, when Denver’s whole northern horizon was light gray.

  4. First off, I hope that everyone in the path of the fire gets out safely.  Second, thanks to all of the firefighters that risk their lives to protect people’s private property.

    Without doing any investigation, I would be willing to bet some Rockies tickets (low value this season!) that a majority of the property owners in the affected area blindly vote Repub, and a significant portion think their taxes are too high and there is too much government.

    The late, great Ed Quillen wrote an article a few years ago on backcountry zoning.  In it, he proposed the “Stupid Zone”.  Tongue in cheek of course because there is something very attractive (even to intelligent people) about living up in the woods, but the point is that living of of the beaten path costs proportionally higher than those living in town, and definitly is not offset by higher property taxes.  In fact the reverse is true – property taxes are often less in rural areas despite the higher cost of services provided.

    In the Stupid Zone, prior to purchasing property, you would sign an acknowledgment that you will get no services.  No fire, police, road grading, plowing, EMS, etc, unless you paid for it (in advance) as part of a higher tax bill.  Would never work, but you would think that would be right up the Tea Party’s alley.

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