Firefighters in Colorado braced for high winds that threatened to blow the state’s most destructive fire in recorded history from treetop to treetop on Sunday.
At least 181 homes have been destroyed by the 55,050-acre High Park fire roughly 15 miles west of Fort Collins. Lightning sparked the blaze on June 9, officials say. [...]
Accompanying the blaze has been some political squalling over the capabilities of the nation’s aging air-tanker fleet, often a fixture in tough-to-get-to wildfires such as these.
The U.S. Forest Service’s newest heavy air tanker is 51 years old, according to the Denver Post, and only nine tankers remain in a fleet that numbered 44 a decade ago as the forest service also catches fewer fires in their early stages.
A forest service spokeswoman said it had enough air resources, but Jim Hall — a former National Transportation Safety Board chairman who headed a 2002 commission that recommended the forest service bolster its fleet — had serious concerns.
"It's been 10 years, and precious little has been done," Hall told the Denver Post. "We are going to see one of the major cities in the West go up in fire because of this inaction."