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CNN Live Today

At Least Eight Wildfires Ravaging Parts of Colorado

Aired June 12, 2002 - 11:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Got to concentrate on a story that's very serious down here on Earth, and that is the fire crews in Colorado who are battling wildfires of historic proportion. Flames from the largest blaze ever in the state are lapping up 35 miles south of Denver. It's one of at least eight wildfires ravaging parts of Colorado at this hour.

And our John Zarrella joins us from Castle Rock with the latest on the Hayman fire. And as we do that, John, I don't know if you -- you probably don't have a monitor out there, but we have this incredible graphic that we had up just for a moment there. It shows the state of Colorado and where all the fires are burning. You can really see how this has consumed the entire state.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Daryn.

There's about 150,000 acres and about eight fires burning total in Colorado. The Hayman fire, being the biggest, at about 87,000 acres, the largest ever in Colorado. And fire season hasn't officially started yet until June 15th. So they're unfortunately way ahead of the game.

I want to tell you a little bit about where we are today. This is a command center here where they are coordinating the efforts to fight the fire, the northern half of this fire, because of its enormity. What they've done now is split it into two groups; this command center handling the efforts to fight the northern half of the fire, and another command center down to our south handling the southern end of the fire.

I want to turn you around a little bit, because it does look like a beautiful clear morning here in Denver. And actually, about 15 miles to the southwest, past the stop sign in the distance back there, that is where the fires are burning. And you really can't tell from here, but there is a lot of haze out there. And as the day wears on, a lot of smoke is likely to start to fill the sky as the fires regenerate from the overnight lulls.

Now there was a little bit of good news last night and yesterday, in that the fire only consumed about 11,000 acres. What had happened was, because of a shift in the wind, the fire actually began to burn back on itself. Good news for the folks outside in the suburbs outside of Denver, but bad news to the south, where 5,000 people had to be evacuated in some of the areas around Florisant, which is at what's called the heel of fire, which is where it first began.

Other news this morning coming out from fire officials here, from the state officials, and from forest officials, they have called in another 16 to 1,800 firefighters from wherever they can get them around the country just to come here to help fight this Hayman fire. And, in addition to that, they've asked for 20 helicopters. They've got four of them already here, so they need about another 16. And they have six to eight tankers out there dropping that raspberry- colored slurry, which is a fire retardant.

But they're hoping for more weather today like they had yesterday, where the humidity came up, the temperature stayed down in the low 80s and the wind was not as brisk as it had been, although there is some concern that it could kick up to about 20 miles an hour later today. So again, hope against hope that the weather will finally start to cooperate a little more than it had been over the weekend Sunday and into Monday -- Daryn.

KAGAN: All right. John Zarrella in Colorado -- thank you so much.

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