Most Destructive Colorado Wildfire Fully Contained

This area is right outside where I used to live.It was not in Waldo Canyon, I wish I could have lived there. I lived in the county out side the AF Academy, north of Colorado Springs.

The most destructive wildfire in Colorado history has been fully contained less than three weeks after it erupted.

A federal incident management team says the 29-square-mile Waldo Canyon Fire was completely encircled by Tuesday.

Officials say smoke may still be visible as areas inside the perimeter of the fire continue to burn.

The fire killed two people and destroyed nearly 350 houses when it burned into northwest Colorado Springs. The cause is still under investigation.

Fires Blazing, No Fire-Fighting Aircraft Planned?

It’s all going to work out, for people living in the Front Range, you need to figure out, an apartment in the crime infested cities is best for you, and more importantly, the environment.

Boulder braces…

Obama Shrunk Aerial Firefighting Fleet…

Good timing just when we need more aircraft to fight the fires in remote woods and mountains? Spent money on handouts instead of planes … Maybe, just maybe, paying to people to act like Grecians is not the right way?

Colorado’s epic fires shows cutting the Air Force budget, for “mo handouts” and EBT cash cards may not work? Mr Preezy, did you think of that?

Democrats, votes for handouts, it’s all out there for people to see. Just join a public sector union. What did you think the union money laundering was all about?

Colorado’s wildfire has exploded into an “epic firestorm,” in the words of Colorado Springs fire chief Richard Brown. Over 30,000 people have evacuated, and already hundreds of homes have been consumed. Ironically, the U.S. Air Force Academy has also been evacuated, at the very time that Colorado desperately needs more Air Force C-130s to fight the massive fire.

A C-130 fitted with the Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) can drop 3,000 gallons of fire-retardant material in 5 seconds, and reload in just 15 minutes. This tempo is crucial to containing wildfires like the one devastating Colorado Springs. However, of a current fleet of nearly 380 C-130s, only eight can be fitted with the MAFFS—and four of them are already in the skies over Colorado. With another fire looming in the north of the state, there is no excess capacity to help protect civilian areas.

That means thousands of exhausted firefighters on the ground are without enough of the crucial support they need to control the fires.

All this raises concerns about President Obama’s defense budget, which cuts 65 C-130s from the fleet over the next four years. While that will leave 318 C-130s, the demands on the fleet are not shrinking in Afghanistan or other places.

Nor did the Air Force have much choice in the matter.

The Air Force took the brunt of Pentagon budget cuts in the 2013 budget, shrinking by 4 percent (or roughly $4 billion dollars), after having a flat budget since 2004. Since 2001, over 500 aircraft have been retired, and another 300 will be scrapped by 2017. All this is happening while demand for the Air Force increases: The service flew approximately 400 sorties per day in Afghanistan and Iraq during 2011, while also fighting in Libya and delivering thousands of tons of disaster relief aid to Japan after its earthquake and tsunami. C-130s have been central to all these operations, and the proposed cuts will reduce airlift capacity among all the Air Force’s components: active, reserve, and guard. Sequestration would be even worse, mandating equal percentage cuts down to the program level across the service, with no flexibility for Air Force leadership to target the cuts.

So we need to cut some-more …. Our lame excuse for a president, needs to go. He is destroying our country on so many fronts, to live up to the Soros plan and UNs Agenda 21 plans. We will be so encumbered with debt, there simple won’t be anything left over for our own people. The “eaters” are taking more than the “makers” can supply.

But as the wildfire in Colorado shows, readiness and flexibility are sometimes needed at home as much as abroad. Cutting more C-130s puts a greater strain on the entire Air Force fleet. It means fewer planes will be available for possible conversion to the MAFFS configuration. And that means that as hundreds of houses burn in Colorado, only eight planes can be called upon to help the thousands of firefighters on the ground. America should not have to make such tradeoffs: We can fight both aggressors and fires smarter and better, but only if we do it increasingly from the sky.

Colorado wildfires: Several fires explode across Front Range

A three-day-old wildfire erupted with catastrophic fury Tuesday, ripping across the foothills neighborhoods of Colorado Springs, devouring an untold number of homes and sending tens of thousands fleeing to safety in what was shaping up as one of the biggest disasters in state history. “This is a firestorm of epic proportions,” said Colorado Springs Fire Chief Richard Brown. The Waldo Canyon fire in El Paso County — which had been growing in the forested hills on the city’s west side — blew into an inferno late in the afternoon, raging over a ridge toward densely populated neighborhoods.

Here is what Waldo Canyon looked like overnight …

An apocalyptic plume of smoke covered Colorado’s second-largest city as thousands of people forced to evacuate clogged Interstate 25 at rush hour trying to get to their homes or to get out of the way.

By nightfall, roughly 32,000 people left their homes, chased out by the flames.

“We have homes burning right now,” El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said shortly before 9 p.m.

The sheriff was among those forced from their homes by the fire.

“This is a very bad day,” said Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach.