The thumbnail image is the Pine Gulch fire from mid-August, courtesy of InciWeb.
The largest fire in Colorado history, the Pine Gulch fire, has been dying down. According to InciWeb, 87% of the perimeter has been contained. Ash no longer coats the cars of students as they drive to class.
The first weeks of the semester this year were unique.
“We [had] the perfect storm: High temperatures, wildfire smoke and a viral pandemic,” Mesa County Public Health Air Quality Specialist Thomas Orr said.
The ash raining down from the sky caused poor air quality that Mesa County Public Health classified as “Unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
“[The Pine Gulch Fire] is a so-called natural event caused by lightning in a remote area that’s very difficult to work with,” Orr said during an interview when the fire was in the single digits for containment. “I lived in Fruita my whole life, and this is probably the worst quality that I have ever seen, that I have ever known of.”
According to WCCC’s Program Director of Wildfire Management Alison Robb, the remote location of the fire combined with high temperatures the Pine Gulch Fire proved to be anything but easy to contain. “When firefighters say a fire is ‘contained,’ a control line has been completed around the fire which can reasonably be expected to stop the fire’s spread,” Robb said.
“The problem with the air quality is that those activities that we like to do outside may not be advisable during periods of high pollution,” Orr said. “Going out for an hour or two is probably not going to be so bad, unless you are really sensitive and have asthma or these other conditions [. . .] but when the air gets unhealthy for all groups, we [recommend] that people not exercise outside.”
Air quality has been back up to “Good” for a few weeks now.
According to Robb, a fire is considered out when no hot spots are detected within containment lines for at least 48 hours. There are still some hot spots, but there is more that crews at the fire sites are turning their attention to.
The reconstruction phase begins now for the Pine Gulch fire, after over 139,000 acres were burned through.
