I watched Live Fox News 31 which showed live motion pictures of the grass fires. Any one with a garden hose with a power nozzle could have put out the grass fire. Everyone was ordered to evacuate. There were zero humans to put the grass fires out. And then the grass fires reached the houses and the houses were slowly burned to nothingness. A massive amount of destruction could have been avoided if the homeowners had been allowed to use garden hoses to spray the small flames. In other cases it was trees blown over by high winds and the fallen trees snapped off power lines which sparked the fires. Trees should not be allowed to hang around with power lines. The 6 month drought caused massive areas to be ultra dry…yet zero attempts were made to bulldoze fire breaks into the open area grass lands. And then the winds came. A recipe for disaster.
Sounds rational but was impossible. The winds were above 50mph. Ever tried to use a garden hose in those winds with a fire approaching at that speed?
Then there is the issue with power. A water pump needs electricity to run. I think power was shut off at a certain point. Embers caused certain houses to burn. How does one water a roof in those winds?
If there were no winds, a lot of houses could have been saved.
This was a no win situation. Very sad.
I was on the phone yesterday with a friend in CO. Her husband has a business not far from Boulder. He called her to ask where was the fire. It was so smoky he couldn't see and he was far from the fire.
This was a freak fire.
The problem with grass fires is complex, but a large part of the problem is invasive annual grasses which dry out quickly and form a fine dense mat of highly combustible material. They call it cheat grass, or “grassoline” and it has been the source of fuel for some seriously major fires in the Western states.
“...garden hoses...”
All well and good in summer. Winter in Colorado - most homes have likely turned off and drained the outside water outlets, to prevent frozen pipes and bursting.
There were zero humans to put the grass fires out.>>>>>>>>>
Progressive Liberalism is a mental illness. This is not the Colorado I used to know from the 1970s.
” The sky is falling.....RUN FOR YOUR LIVES”
Back in the day a few hundred cowboys would have pissed this fire out in its early stages. Not only that, they would have pissed downwind.
But now Colorado has become a colony of California.Sucks to be them.