The Olney Springs emergency vehicles had rolled out about 3:45 p.m. Bruce DeVore rode in a firetruck behind his son’s and Schwartz’s firetruck.
“From what I understand, the smoke was so bad on the highway they couldn’t see,” Deb DeVore said. “They could see his taillights and they were following him. All of a sudden the taillights disappeared and they slowed down. The road was no longer there.”
The fire had gone under the bridge and burned it.
“The visibility was so bad that the bridge had collapsed ahead of them and they didn’t even know it,” Crowley County Coroner Karen Tomky said.
She met with both families Tuesday night.
Schwartz, who was single, was raising his two eldest boys and had shared custody of his two youngest sons. Toni Schwartz said the older boys were at their house in Fowler because their school had been evacuated. They didn’t know how long their dad would be at the fire.
“The boys were pretty torn up,” Toni Schwartz said. “Their dad was their whole world.”
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/apr/16/two-prison-workers-among-dead-ordway-fire/
Just announced on the radio at 4:00MST that evacuation orders have been lifted for all three fires. Radar shows that Carbondale should have seen light snow for much of the day. Snow also in the Colorado Springs area and looks to be snowing just north of Ft Carson.