Blaze near La Veta Doubles in Size
FORT GARLAND -
The Mato Vega fire marched slowly Tuesday toward the summit of La Veta Pass, doubling in size and threatening a subdivision directly in its path.
The lightning-ignited blaze, which burgeoned Monday night and Tuesday morning to nearly 9,000 acres, was only 5 percent contained but had destroyed no homes and appeared to be stagnating Tuesday night.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” said Larry Klock, a fire line supervisor stationed along U.S. Highway 160, near the front of the fire. “But today we have a little reprieve. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”
Highway 160, shut down Monday as
flames licked to its edge, was expected to remain closed today between La Veta and Fort Garland as crews set fires close to the road in an effort to get rid of dead grass and other fuels.
The Mato Vega fire was spotted about noon Sunday and had grown to 800 acres by the end of the day. It exploded to 4,500 acres Monday, then burned through the night, a time when fires normally calm down. That’s because it’s so dry, firefighters said.
By Tuesday morning, the fire was at 8,960 acres, burning in an area that includes sage and pine trees.
“It’s doing what it wants to do,” said fire information officer Carl Brauneis. “It wants to burn.”
Yet the combination of slightly higher humidity, cooler temperatures and the topography kept the fire “skunking,” not racing over new terrain as it had earlier, Brauneis said.
That helped firefighters achieve their goal of preventing the blaze from leaping to the south side of the highway.
Throughout the day, two helicopters dumped buckets of water on the blaze, while about 283 firefighters worked on the ground.
The price tag for fighting the fire had reached $350,000 by the end of the day.
Residents, asked Monday to leave about 280 homes in the Paradise Acres, Wagon Creek and Forbes Park subdivisions, stayed away Tuesday. Paradise Acres, with about 70 homes, is directly in the path of the fire.
It wasn’t clear how many residents had left; a number of the homes are owned by seasonal residents and weren’t occupied at the time.
Tuesday, the highway was empty, and smoke hung like a soupy fog, sometimes turning bright orange as flames torched the dry pines.
A couple of black bears were seen scurrying from the woods, said Myers Archuota, who sat in his pickup along the highway, guarding the entrance to Forbes Trinchera Ranch, a 175,000-acre property. “I’ve never seen a fire that size,” he said as smoke billowed over the ridge.
“I’ve lived here all my life. We’ve had fires, but we’ve been able to put them out.”
Without the usual stream of tourists heading down the highway to visit the Sand Dunes National Park, Alamosa and other places in the San Luis Valley, Fort Garland was quiet Tuesday.
The antique shops and cafes will suffer if the road isn’t opened soon, resident Bernie Roybal said. “We depend on that type of business,” he said.
What the fire is taking away in dollars, it’s adding in activity, he added. “This town hasn’t seen this much excitement since our house burned,” said Roybal, who said his house was destroyed in a December fire.
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