June 09 -- Sunday morning’s flyover of the 416 fire north of Durango brought news that had been feared, but expected given the tinderbox weather conditions: The blaze nearly doubled in 24 hours and has now burned 16,766 acres.
The fast-growing fire prompted a raft of new mandatory evacuation orders Sunday affecting 675 homes, including some at Purgatory Resort, signaling that fire officials expect the fire to spread north and east.
The Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team’s morning update, issued at 10 a.m., said the fire was 10 percent contained. That figure is unchanged from Saturday morning, when the previous estimate put the acreage of the fire — which is burning about 13 miles north of Durango, in southwestern Colorado — at nearly 8,700 acres.
Fire officials expected the rapid march of the fire on Saturday.
“Fire behavior is always determined by three factors: weather, terrain and the fuel type,” said Shawn Bawden, spokesman for the fire management team. “When those three factors line up, the fire can make a good run. That’s what we saw yesterday.”
Sunday’s weather forecast calls for another day of hot, bone-dry and breezy conditions, with wind gusts of up to 35 mph anticipated near the 416 fire. The National Weather Service has issued Red Flag warnings (highlighting high fire danger) that cover much of western Colorado, the northern and central mountains, and the foothills near Denver.
That likely means the 416 fire will grow again, Bawden said, with an analyst predicting the flames will advance 1 to 2 miles per hour at times.
As of late Saturday, the fire was still at least six miles south of the Purgatory ski resort, he said.
Sunday morning’s evacuations affected residents in and near the Purgatory Resort (formerly named Durango Mountain Resort), Lake Purgatory, Silver Pick Lodge, Cascade Village and Mill Creek, along with homes on both sides of U.S. 550. between mile markers 46.5 and 53.1, according to La Plata County officials.
That brings the number of homes covered by mandatory evacuation orders to 2,500, according to La Plata County’s announcements.
No homes or structures have been lost as the wildfire continues to consume swaths of forest land. No injuries have been reported.
This weekend, firefighters have been staging fire engines near some homes and doing advance work to remove flammable materials and cut away brush. Near Hermosa, Bawden said, the fire has “come up to some people’s backyards.” But so far, the defensive efforts have paid off.
“The fire has not crossed highway 550,” he said. “That’s one of our big objectives,” since areas east of U.S. 550 are more populated.
More than 800 firefighters are working the fire, which remains west of U.S. 550. The highway was closed to through traffic from mile marker 32 to the San Juan County line.
The fire broke out June 1, and the cause remains under investigation.
Another wildfire called the Burro fire has been burning since Friday about 13 miles west of the 416 fire in the San Juan National Forest, in Montezuma County. An update issued Sunday morning said that fire’s footprint had grown since Saturday morning from about 100 acres to 493 acres, with zero containment.
Elsewhere in the state, the Bocco fire began burning about 3 miles north of Wolcott on Saturday. By Sunday morning, it had reached 415 acres, according to the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office.
The 79-acre Natty fire in Fremont County, about nine miles north of Cañon City, was reported to be 70 percent contained in a Saturday evening update from the Bureau of Land Management.
In southwestern Colorado, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment said Saturday that smoke had reached unhealthy levels in La Plata County as far south as the Colorado-New Mexico state line. The area includes the communities of Durango and Hermosa and the Southern Ute Reservation.
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