'Monster' Colo. fire doubles in size

Fire crews outside Colorado Springs, Colo., expected more weather trouble on Wednesday in what the local fire chief called a "monster event" that doubled in size overnight and has forced 32,000 people to flee.

Heavy smoke made for unhealthy air in and around the city. After jumping fire lines Tuesday, the towering blaze has now burned 24 square miles and an undetermined number of homes.

While crews should get a break from the heat, a forecast for thunderstorms could mean unpredictable winds.

"We expect further trouble from the weather today," incident commander Rich Harvey said at a press briefing. "We do expect all of our lines to be challenged today."

Colorado Springs Fire Chief Rich Brown called the Waldo Canyon Fire a "monster event" that is "not even remotely close to being contained." The cause of the fire is under investigation.

Tuesday night, the community of Mountain Shadows, northwest of Colorado Springs, appeared to be enveloped in an orange glow.

People were "freaking out" as they fled Tuesday night, local resident Kathleen Tillman told the Denver Post. "You are driving through smoke. It is completely pitch black, and there is tons of ash dropping on the road."

"This is a fire of epic proportions," Brown said at a briefing Tuesday night.

"It was like looking at the worst movie set you could imagine," Gov. John Hickenlooper added after flying over the fire. "It's almost surreal. You look at that, and it's like nothing I've seen before."

Among the evacuees were cadets and staff at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where flames crested a ridge high above its campus on Tuesday when more than 2,100 residents were told to get out.

A new class of 1,045 cadets was to have reported to campus on Thursday but will instead check in at another facility.

Brown insisted that "many, many homes" were saved by firefighters.

Hickenlooper told anxious residents that "we have all the support of the U.S. government. We have all the support of the state of Colorado. And we want everybody here to know that."

He emphasized that Colorado was open to tourism, saying various fires had affected just a half-percent of all public lands and perhaps 400 of 10,000 campground sites.

Colorado is battling 12 large fires, its worst fire season in history, and other states across the West are being taxed as well.

To the north in Boulder County, 26 homes were evacuated Tuesday when lightning sparked a wildfire. No structures were immediately threatened, but the National Center for Atmospheric Research closed as a precaution.

Wildfires leave Colorado tourism high and dry

The state's largest blaze is the 136-square-mile High Park Fire, which has destroyed 257 homes and killed one woman. That fire was triggered by lightning on June 9 and is nearly contained.

Most of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana have seen red flag warnings in recent days, meaning extreme fire danger.

The West is seeing "a super-heated spike on top of a decades-long warming trend," Derek Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the National Climatic Data Center, told the Associated Press.

Elsewhere in the West:

• In Utah, a woman was found dead Tuesday in a blaze that consumed at least two dozen homes. Her body was found during a damage assessment of the 60-square-mile Wood Hollow Fire near Indianola. The fire was 15 percent contained and evacuations were issued in Fairview, a town of about 1,100 residents.
• In New Mexico, a fire that burned nearly 70 square miles west of Ruidoso was 90 percent contained, with many residents allowed to return home.
• In Montana, a wildfire just 2 miles north of Helena destroyed four homes and forced people out of 200 homes. Gov. Brian Schweitzer issued a state of emergency for four counties.
• In Wyoming, a wildfire in the Bridger-Teton National Forest grew from about 300 acres to 2,000 acres Tuesday, marking the first major wildfire of the season there.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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