(Los Angeles) About 19,000 people were ordered to evacuate their homes because of major fires on Saturday evening in Colorado, a US state where fires and drought are recurring plagues.
Posted at 12:20 p.m.
The fires seemed less threatening on Sunday morning but more than 1,600 residents remained under evacuation orders, according to authorities in Boulder, a city of more than 100,000 inhabitants located about fifty kilometers from Denver, the state capital.
PHOTO HELEN H. RICHARDSON, THE DENVER POST VIA AP
A water tanker dumps water on a raging fire in Boulder on March 26.
The fire is now “21% contained”, said Mike Smith, a fire department official, at a press conference, adding that no injuries were reported for the time being and that no building had been destroyed.
But with such fires well before the start of the more flaming summer, “we’re a bit worried about the coming season,” he said.
” Conditions [météorologiques] are unusually warm, dry, and windy for the season,” Daniel Swain, a meteorologist at UCLA University, observed on Twitter on Saturday.
According to the US Weather Service (NWS) in Boulder, heat close to records, but less intense than the day before, is still expected on Sunday.
In December, massive fires had destroyed entire neighborhoods in this part of Colorado, an unusual phenomenon during the winter. Hundreds of homes had gone up in smoke, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee.
PHOTO ALICIA MILLER, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
This Louisville home was destroyed by fire in December 2021.
The fires, recurring in this part of the United States, have been particularly devastating in recent years, California and Oregon suffering unprecedented fires.
Like much of the American West, Colorado, an already arid state, has been struggling with exceptional drought for several years.
With global warming, the intensity and frequency of episodes of drought and heat waves are likely to increase further, continuing to create ideal conditions for forest or bush fires.