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Red Canyon fire stays at 390 acres on Thursday

John Colson
Glenwood Springs Post Independent
This map, provided by the Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team A, shows the general outlines of the Red Canyon Fire, which at one point came close to topping the ridge to the south and east of Glenwood Springs (red line near Div A label). Fire fighting crews used a bulldozer to dig a fire line adjacent to a powerline (near the Div F label) to keep the fire from advancing underneath the powerline. The fire seems to have been concentrated on the southern flanks of lower Lookout Mountain, not the eastern side as was reported earlier.

GLENWOOD SPRINGS — One of the spokesmen for the multi-agency team fighting the Red Canyon Fire said on Thursday morning that the federal and state aspects of the team’s work may be winding down within a couple of days.

“We’re feeling very good about the fire,” said Bill Kight, public information officer for the Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team A (RMIMTA), which is in charge of the fire suppression effort.

“We’re figuring in a couple of days we’ll be able to turn this back to the home units,” Kight added, referring to the Basalt, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs and the Colorado River Fire Rescue, based in Rifle, all of which have been working the fire since it first flared on Aug. 12.



At shortly after 5 p.m. on Thursday, another spokesman for the RMIMTA, Clark McCreedy of Wyoming, said the fire had not grown at all during the day, although the blaze remains active.

Confirming that the official containment number still stood at 27 percent Thursday evening, he added and that crews were anticipating containment of more of the fire by the end of Thursday.




The RMIMTA includes personnel from those local fire departments as well as from the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

McCreedy confirmed that the fire is still covering about 390 acres of terrain, and is being fought using single engine air attack tankers as well as five ground crews.

McCreedy also reported that 20 fire engines, three water tenders and one bulldozer were still on the job of fighting the fire, and that the number of firefighters has held steady at 211.

He also reported that County Road 115 (Red Canyon Road) remains closed from the intersection with State Highway 82 up to the intersection with CR 119 (Kindall Road).

Evacuees from approximately 20 homes in the Lookout Mountain Road area near the fire zone had still not been permitted to return to their homes as of Thursday evening.

A pre-evacuation alert for a subdivision near the fire zone, called the Christeleit subdivision, has not yet been lifted, Kight said, although none of the homes in that subdivision have actually been evacuated.