Monster fires ravage hundreds of homes in Colorado

Hotels and shopping centers, hundreds of houses and more than 650 hectares of vegetation. All this went up in smoke in the space of just one day, the fault of the devastating fires that occurred Thursday in Colorado, state of the American West.

During a press conference, the sheriff of Boulder County – a city located about fifty kilometers from Denver, the capital of Colorado – took stock of the damage. About 370 houses destroyed in the subdivision of Sagamore, and probably 210 in the old town of Superior.

The damage inventory is already heavy, even if the seriousness of the human toll remains unknown, as Sheriff Joe Pelle pointed out: “I would like to emphasize the magnitude and intensity of this fire and its presence in such a densely populated area. We wouldn’t be surprised if there were injuries or deaths. ”

The American press gives an idea of ​​the situation on the spot. According to the newspaper Colorado Sun, several people had to be treated for burns, of which at least six were hospitalized. And on CBS, we discover this time images of an apartment building in flames that the firefighters are trying to put out.

“Your life will be in danger”

Thousands of Colorado residents were ordered to evacuate shortly before the fires. Like the 20,000 residents of Louisville, who received a clear message from the weather services: “Get out of Louisville or your life will be in danger.”

A few kilometers away, Superior, 13,000 inhabitants, was also targeted by a full evacuation order. And images posted on social media Thursday, showing a dark cloud of smoke covering the city, illustrate the gravity of the situation.

In the local newspaper Denver Post, several residents recounted what they had experienced. Patrick Kilbride, 72, was working in a hardware store when he was ordered to evacuate. No matter how hard he rushed home to collect his things as quickly as possible, he couldn’t save anything other than his car and the clothes he had on his back. Her cat and dog died in the flames. “Only ashes remain”, he described, referring to the house he lived in for three decades.

Exceptional drought

This disaster comes against a backdrop of exceptional drought, which has lasted for several years in Colorado. With global warming, the intensity and frequency of drought and heatwave episodes are likely to increase further, thus creating ideal conditions for forest or bush fires. In recent years, the American West has experienced unprecedented fires, especially in California and Oregon.

For Daniel Swain, a meteorologist at UCLA, he is “Hard to believe” that these fires occur in December, a period usually not conducive to this type of event in the region. In a tweet, he gives his theory, which can be seen as the start of a more than worrying response: “But take a record-breaking heat and drought fall, only an inch of snow so far this season, and add a storm with extreme downward gusts… and the result is extremely dangerous, very fast moving fires.”