Above: screenshot from the Hotchkiss Fire District video.
(UPDATE at 6:38 a.m. MDT May 31, 2018)
The Bureau of Land Management has released a 24-Hour Preliminary Report indicating that during initial attack on the Horse Park Fire in southwest Colorado May 27, 2018 a command vehicle was abandoned and is thought to be a total loss. The driver was turning around when the vehicle got stuck. Due to the advancing fire, the driver and passenger had to flee on foot. There were no reports of injuries.
In the second video below (at 0:06) you can hear a radio conversation about losing a vehicle but the firefighters made it out.
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Originally published at 10:53 a.m. MDT May 29, 2018.
In the three days since the Horse Park Fire started in Southwest Colorado it has burned about 1,500 acres. It’s not a huge fire yet but at times has shown some pretty aggressive fire behavior for the month of May in Colorado.
In the two videos below shot May 27 and posted by the Hotchkiss Fire District you can see that in spite of the date on the calendar firefighters were forced to make a strategic withdrawal when the rapidly spreading fire started moving in their direction.
Warning: the second video has some coarse language as firefighters are being encouraged to relocate.
The Horse Park Fire is burning at about 8,000′ in a very remote area 15 miles southwest of Norwood and 40 miles west of Telluride. Jay Esperance’s Type 2 Incident Management Team has arrived and will in-brief at 10 a.m. today.
Above normal wildfire activity for most of Southern Colorado was predicted when the latest Wildland Fire Potential Outlook was released by the National Interagency Fire Center on May 1. At that time the conditions were expected to continue through June in Colorado. We should have an updated outlook on June 1.
Below are the temperature and precipitation outlooks for June 5 through 11.
