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CNN Live Today

Winds and Tinder Dry Brush Hindering Efforts to Contain Wildfires in Colorado

Aired June 18, 2002 - 13:40   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Erratic winds and tinder dry brush are hindering efforts to contain several fast-moving wildfires in Colorado. Four fires are burning across the state. The situation is most desire west of Colorado Springs, where a 113,000 acre fire is surging across new terrain.

CNN's Rusty Dornin joins us from Castle Rock with the latest on these conditions.

Hello again, Rusty.

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, the fire jumped 10,000 acres in one day. Now, it is still 47 percent contained, and how that can happen is in one area, they were able to add containment acreage. While in the south, it blew up from these erratic winds that you were talking about, blew over the fire lines, and forced about 100 people to evacuate from three different subdivisions.

Now there's about 7,000 people who are on alert today. They're told to watch TV, listen to the radio, in case the winds come back up, so they may have to flee their homes immediately. This is still the biggest fire here burning in Colorado. There's about 5,600 people that are still evacuated from this fire. But the second largest fire now is burning near Durango, where they have now evacuated about 1,700 homes. It jumped 8,000 acres in one day. It's up to about 38,000 acres.

So the winds have really been the biggest problem here in Colorado, very dry temperatures. Today, the humidity is only supposed to be about 5 percent, which is not good. They need more moisture. That always brings the level down.

The gusty winds caused real problems, because it causes spotting. In other words, it will take the fire from the crown of the tree and it can spot up to a half mile ahead of the fire due to these gusty winds. So these winds are just beginning to pick up right now, and it's worse -- the worst time of the day is about 1:00 local until about 4:00. That's when they really have to be on watch -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, Rusty Dornin, thank you so much for that update.

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