By Dave Marston
The Marshall Fire that demolished more than 1,000 homes along the front range of Colorado two weeks ago was not unique. This particular kind of fire happened before, on April 17, 2018 — 115 miles due south of the Marshall Fire.
The wildfire was simply called the MM 117 fire for mile marker 117 on Interstate 25 south of Colorado Springs, in El Paso County. Despite earning a federal disaster declaration and scorching over 43,000 acres it never rated a real name.
Like the Marshall Fire, this grass fire came on fast and stopped almost as soon as the winds died. At the time, it was the fifth-largest in state history but 100 percent contained in 72 hours.
It began when a motorist, their car dragging its muffler, sent sparks into the air when there was just 4 percent humidity and winds blowing up to 80 miles per hour. Sparks ignited the grass. Fire investigators on the scene said any motorist with an overheating engine could have sparked a blaze. The entire day it seemed all of Colorado was hammered by winds that grounded planes at Denver International, then grounded firefighting planes as well.
Unable to reach homeowners by car, with the fire racing away, frantic officials resorted to pleas over Facebook message boards: “A deputy sheriff said he was driving at 35 mph near the fire Tuesday, April 17th, 2018, and it was moving faster than he was,” reported Wildfire Today.
The final tally was horrifying for a fire that lasted barely the length of a holiday weekend — 24 structures destroyed, over 43,000 acres scorched, and “untold number of livestock,” mostly beef cattle killed, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Speed was a big part of the story. The fire raced due east and covered 20 miles in just a few hours. Along the way, It leaped over roads, torched houses and seemed impossible to stop. Yet when winds died and rains came, containment of the fire happened quickly.
There is a stunning lesson to be learned from this grassland fire: We have little control over wind-whipped grasslands fires once they get going. All we can do is run.
Dave Marston is the publisher of Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West.
This article was first published on Writers on the Range.
Here is another valuable fire weather research paper (January 2022) by NOAA worthy of consideration, being that it’s the first Fire Order. It deals primarily with the Marshall Fire, titled: “Wet, then dry extremes contributed to devastating Marshall Fire in Colorado.” It explains the setup that leads up to this and other like wildfires in the Rocky Mountains.
( https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/wet-then-dry-extremes-contributed-devastating-marshall-fire-colorado )
Welcome to firefighting on the Great Plains.
Yes, flank attacks are the only option on these wind driven fires and this usually ends up not being a viable option. It’s usually a case of too much wind, too much fire, and far too few resources to do anything accept get people out of the way and wait for the wind to die down. This kind of fire behavior makes it just about impossible to find an anchor point or use any other tactic. It takes time to muster resources and unfortunately, incident commanders have neither the time nor the resources when these fires take off. The only viable option is to use what little resources are available for evacuation. When the Paradise fire took off, the first-in battalion chief ordered up fifteen strike teams of engines. By the time those strike teams were able to marry-up and head out towards the fire the damage was already done.