December 18, 2025 09:50 AM UTC

At Long Last, Has Lauren Boebert No Shame? Yuma Fires Edition

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• by: Colorado Pols

As 9NEWS reports this morning, although precautions taken by Xcel Energy to prevent a repeat of the devastating Marshall Fire of December of 2021 along the Front Range foothills during yesterday’s 100 mile-an-hour-plus windstorm appear to have succeeded, large windswept fires tore through rural Yuma County last night, burning tens of thousands of acres in a matter of hours:

People living in Yuma County in eastern Colorado are being warned of wildfires in the area.

According to Yuma County Emergency Management’s Facebook page, “multiple” fires are burning throughout the county and strong winds may cause them to spread rapidly.

Some residents were asked to evacuate Wednesday night. Several shelters were set up for evacuees at Wray EMS, Grassroots Center in Joes and Yuma High School. The shelters closed early Thursday morning with impacted residents told they were cleared to return to their homes.

Denver7 reports that Yuma County residents are headed home after a scary night:

Emergency personnel have contained all of the wildfires that broke out in Yuma County on Wednesday evening and continued burning into Thursday morning.

The only fire that was currently active as of 2:30 a.m. Thursday was in a rural area of the county south of Eckley near the Heartstrong neighborhood. It had burned an estimated 40,000 acres as of then, according to Jake Rockwell, emergency manager for Yuma County Office of Emergency Management. By that point, the other fires had been contained.

As of 7:40 a.m., the Colorado Department Of Fire Prevention and Control told Denver7 that all fires were contained and in “patrol status.” All evacuation orders had been lifted.

It’s going to take time to assess the damage from this huge burn area, but Yuma County officials already know the cause:

Rockwell said officials believe all of the fires were caused by downed power lines due to the wind. [Pols emphasis] The strong gusts made it impossible for firefighting aircraft to fly, according to the Colorado Department of Fire Prevention and Control. A multi-mission aircraft is expected to map the burned areas on Thursday.

The fires in Yuma County were caused by downed power lines, which is exactly what motivated Xcel Energy to pre-emptively shut off power to specific locations in their service area affected by high winds yesterday. Yuma County isn’t served by Xcel, but the local utility reportedly had engaged its own powerline safety systems. That apparently wasn’t enough.

After slamming Xcel Energy’s disaster prevention plan as “California-style insanity imported by leftists” on Tuesday, Rep. Lauren Boebert seems to have shifted her quarrelsome gears, responding with thoughts and prayers to tens of thousands of acres in her district going up in flames:

The problem being, of course, that if Yuma County had participated in Xcel’s “California-style insanity,” 40,000 acres might not have burned last night.

In regular people, getting something this stupendously wrong, with the consequences of being wrong this undeniably in your face, becomes a moment for self-reflection. Sometimes it even results in that rarest of acts in contemporary politics, a sincere apology.

But as readers know, Lauren Boebert is no regular person.