Tag: Fourmile Canyon Fire

A seemingly innocuous and mostly administrative bill to swap fire district land for U.S. Forest Service land in Boulder County won U.S. Senate approval Thursday after being held up for more than a year.

DECKERS, Colo. – State wildlife officials recently released 12 more Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep into the recovering landscape of the 2002 Hayman fire – Colorado’s largest in terms of area at 138,000 acres. Sparked by a disgruntled U.S. Forest Service employee during one of the state’s most severe droughts, the Hayman fire also destroyed 133 homes and caused $40 million in damages. Last summer’s Fourmile Canyon fire surpassed Hayman in terms of property damage, with 169 homes destroyed near Boulder.

State Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, today saw her bill aimed at providing property tax relief for victims of wildfires pass unanimously out of the House Local Government Committee. “This bill idea was brought to me by a few of my constituents whose homes were badly burned last fall during the Fourmile Canyon fire," Levy said in a release. “The goal here is to protect landowners whose properties or structures have been burned from having their property taxes rise.”

Citing last month’s wildfires near Boulder and Loveland and the ongoing Church’s Park Fire in Grand County, U.S. Sens. Mark Udall and Michael Bennet...

Colorado Sen. Mark Udall today fired off a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Gov. Bill Ritter requesting a formal study of...

Wildfire season in Colorado took a while to get going but now appears to be in full swing in late summer, with a blaze near Loveland claiming two homes and spreading to 900 acres over the weekend just as firefighters gained the upper hand on Boulder’s Fourmile Canyon Fire.

BOULDER -- Blue skies and sunshine set off Boulder in all its glory Saturday as normalcy returned to town. Concern that the Fourmile Canyon fire could move into the city ceased, as did the smoke pouring over the ridge lines. Firefighters say they have the nearly 6,500-acre blaze 56 percent contained.

As strong winds whipped up again overnight in the Boulder area, where a Colorado record 169 homes have already been destroyed in the ongoing Fourmile Canyon Fire, there’s also a growing firestorm of debate over how climate change contributes to wildfires across the West.