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American Morning

Largest Fire in Colorado History Already Burned Almost 90,000 Acres

Aired June 12, 2002 - 07:02   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning, the words of the U.S. Forest Service say it all is zero percent contained. Estimated containment date: unknown. The largest fire in Colorado state history has already burned almost 90,000 acres and has covered Denver in a haze, sending ash two states away. Officials are pleading for another 800 firefighters to battle the blaze.

Joining us now with the latest from Castle Rock, Colorado is John Zarrella -- good morning, John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. Well, the front page of this morning's "Rocky Mountain News" pretty much says it all: "Scorched Earth, 150,000 acres." That's from no less than eight fires burning here in the Colorado area.

The worst fire, of course, the Hayman fire, not far from us just to the southwest, about 87,000 acres burning in this Hayman fire.

Now, we are here in Douglas County at a command center, and what the command officials here hope for is perhaps a break in the weather. Yesterday, they got a little bit of a break in that the winds shifted direction and forced the fire back on itself. That was good news for the suburbs outside of Denver, allowed people, many people to stay in their homes. They did not need to evacuate.

But in what firefighters call the heel of the fire down on the southern end, that shift in wind direction forced the fire back on communities near Florissant. Now, what that meant was that about 5,000 people had to evacuate very quickly from their homes and residents down in those mountainous communities near Florissant.

Now, Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Joe Allbaugh has been here surveying the situation, and Joe Allbaugh said that he hoped that people would listen to their local authorities.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE ALLBAUGH, FEMA DIRECTOR: This is a serious situation, and everyone needs to understand the gravity that we are faced with right now. The winds are kicking up. To put this in perspective insofar as my agency is concerned, in calendar year 2001, there were 42 fires that asked for assistance, and I declared 39 of them. To date, there have been 43 fires in this calendar year. We are just into June, and we have done about 42 of those 43 fires.

So we are in a drought situation nationwide. This is very serious business. I would ask that individuals pay attention to their local authorities. They are the ones who understand the situation better than any of us. And if they issue an order to evacuate, do us all a favor and evacuate. We don't need to be putting any more lives at risk than that is necessary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZARRELLA: A little while ago, I spoke with Red Cross officials here, who told me that while they had hundreds and hundreds of people in the five shelters that are open in the four-county area here, that only about 100 people stayed overnight. I asked, well, where do all these people go when they leave? They are not going back to their homes. And I was told that what they are doing is staying with friends, staying with family, moving into hotels and motels as best they can in the surrounding areas.

Now again, 87,000 acres burned from this fire. Today's weather conditions expected to be much like they were yesterday. The winds a little bit lighter, the humidity around 14-15 percent, a little bit higher humidity that they have had here, and temperatures in the low 80s with afternoon thunderstorms a chance here in the Denver area.

So again, a very, very serious situation. The fire is by means under control at all.

This is John Zarrella reporting live from Douglas County, Colorado -- Paula.

ZAHN: John, before we let you go, we mentioned that officials are pleading for some 800 more firefighters to come to the region. If they volunteer their services, how soon might that kind of help come their way?

ZARRELLA: They are trying to get that help in periodically starting immediately. They have two of what they call type I teams here, which are the really, really top notch federal firefighters. They have got another firefighting team that they have called in already. They are starting to ratchet it up as quickly as possible, and they say that they expect to have about 1,000 firefighters on the ground here within the next few days -- Paula.

ZAHN: Heartbreaking to watch -- John Zarrella, thanks so much for that late report.

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