Government readies for 'long' fire season

DENVER, June 11 (UPI) -- Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh toured two separate sections of wildfire-scorched Colorado by helicopter Tuesday -- including the ravaging "Hayman" fire threatening Denver -- and warned that the record-breaking wildfires out of control in Colorado might foreshadow an upcoming fire season that is particularly dangerous.

He said the federal government is ready to spend whatever it takes to help fight back against a devastating summer.

Allbaugh said he had discussed the situation with President Bush and assured residents in nearby communities that Bush and Congress would send whatever money was necessary to help states and local communities.

"We are in a drought situation not only here in Colorado but across the nation," Allbaugh told firefighters in Glenwood Springs, a town 170 miles west of Denver struck by the 10,000-acre "Coal Seam" fire. The fire rolled into the bucolic Colorado town this past weekend at nearly 40 miles an hour. The fire somehow ground to a halt along the edge of town, destroying only 31 buildings.

"The president fully understands the dangers of fires," Allbaugh said. "The president and Congress will make sure that we have all the resources we need. We don't want states and local governments worrying about how to pay for this."

FEMA designates particularly intense fires that threaten lives and property and pays 75 percent of fire fighting costs through special firefighting grants. As a sign of the intensity of this fire season, FEMA has already handed out 10 of those grants in Colorado this calendar year, but over the previous six years handed out only eight in Colorado.

Colorado's wildfire season does not begin until June 15, Republican Gov. Bill Owens said.

Firefighters on the ground said the state has become a tinderbox.

"We are setting records every day," said Steve Hart, an incident commander with the state forest service fighting the Coal Seam fire. "You could drop a cigarette butt and it would burst into flames.

The coal seam fire started when flames escaped from an opening above a coal seam west of Glenwood Springs on Saturday.

"It is the driest I've seen it," Hart said. "We have not seen these conditions and our fathers have not seen these condition."

Interior Secretary Gale Norton toured the massive Hayman fire Tuesday. "This is a year when severe drought is affecting much of the Rocky Mountain area," Norton said.

"This is a very serious situation nation wide," Allbaugh said.

Owens said that in Colorado, the snow pack is 2 percent of what it should be. By June 11, the state had lost more acreage to fire than ever before during an entire fire season, the governor said. There are eight fires burning in the state.

Those are the conditions that are feeding the voracious flames of the Hayden wildfire, which is burning almost completely out of control and has scorched nearly 80,000 acres 55 miles southwest of Denver and is four times bigger than the previous biggest fire ever in the state. While that fire stalled some Tuesday, it was creeping toward the sprawling metropolis at around 1 mile per hour, fire fighters said Tuesday.

Fire fighting officials said they suspect that an illegal campfire started that fire. Owens has announced an indefinite ban on all open fires and the use of fireworks.

They also said that fire is essentially completely out of control and could suddenly move forward fast with stiff winds blowing intense heat already hanging over the rugged mountains dotted with pine, mixed conifer, gamble oak and grass.

From a helicopter, the front line of the Hayden fire forms a mountainous mushroom of white and brown smoke that blots out the sun and drifts off across the wilderness to the horizon. The smoke shoots almost straight up some 4,000 feet before beginning to disperse, towering over the small town of Lake George that sits in the fire's path some 20 miles away where helicopters shuttle water back and forth.

"There is reason for continued serious concern about this fire," Owens said at a news conference in Lake George, with the smoke billowing up behind him. "With the wind starting to pick up and the humidity falling. The fire officials are still telling us this fire is still very, very dangerous. We are not out of the woods, so to speak, by any means."