2012 Colorado wildfire coverage: Part 4

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DELAYED EVACUATIONS The Waldo Canyon fire

Burning questions remain Residents, officials seek explanation for 2-hour lapse before implementation of preset plan

By Jeremy P. Meyer and David Olinger The Denver Post

colorado springs» Authorities waited two hours after the raging Waldo Canyon fire had breached a predetermined evacuation trigger point before ordering residents to leave, a review of radio traffic shows.

NATION & WORLD

The result: Panicked residents had minutes to flee the wildfire as flames raced down the hillside into their neighborhood. Within an hour of the order, roads were jammed and homes were on fire. Some residents were still packing to leave when their houses began to ignite.

A Denver Post investigation into the June 26 evacuation of thousands of homes

and the decisions leading up to it found city officials failed to follow a preset plan as the fire raged toward the city. And even three weeks later, city officials are unclear about what happened and why the northern part of the Mountain Shadows neighborhood didn’t get the evacuation order until it was almost too late.

Colorado Springs Fire Chief Richard

Brown said he was unaware of the delay in ordering those mandatory evacuations but said all aspects of the fire will be reviewed. “My concern now is how do we learn from this? How do other communities faced with this learn?

That is what we are about, learning and sharing what we have learned,” he said.

Some of those residents forced to

leave said the lack of timely notice put lives in jeopardy.

“There were no police, no firemen.

Nobody was around except some of the neighbors,” said Bryan Gibson, who along with his son rescued his 86year-old mother from their Mountain Shadows home. “We both got out FIRE » 14A

“The mild winter didn’t control the pests.”Ron Meyer, Colorado State University extension agent

BULGARIA BLAST BLAMED ON MILITANT A senior U.S. official confirms Israel’s assertions that the suicide bomber who killed seven in Bulgaria was a member of Hezbollah. »21A

CANDIDATES’ WIVES STEP UP IN CAMPAIGNS As the election season starts simmering, the campaigns are rolling out Michelle Obama and Ann Romney. »24A

SPORTS

BOULDER RIDER GAINS NOTICE Tejay Van Garderen at 23 may be the best young rider at the Tour de France. »1B

McGRAW CHESNEY The two country music stars are playing Colorado’s biggest show. »ENTERTAINMENT, 1C

Turn up the volume. The Underground Music Showcase continues this weekend. »1C

Farmer Harry Strohauer walks in one of his cornfields Thursday near LaSalle that is damaged from thousands of grasshoppers. RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post

FARMS’ PLAGUE lasalle» Colorado farmers already plagued by a debilitating drought are now fighting the arrival of crop-eating insects who like the hot, dry weather that has settled over the state and elsewhere.

“It’s to the point where we just feel beat up,” said Harry Strohauer, who has already let 500 acres of corn on his 3,500-acre Weld County spread die to conserve water.

Grasshoppers, an annual threat to corn and other plants, are back this year in huge numbers in some areas of

Border posts fall to rebels

By Babak Dehghanpisheh and Liz Sly The Washington Post

Colorado, say agriculture experts.

That includes Strohauer’s farm, which also grows potatoes for local retailers. On Thursday, as Strohauer walked down a row of dying corn stalks, swarms of grasshoppers leaped around his head after tearing holes through what used to be a viable crop.

In another field, the pests have gnawed entire rows of corn to the ground.

Strohauer said he and other farmers who are watching their once green fields fade away face the same pricey dilemma.

antakya, turkey» Syrian rebels seized control of several critical border crossings Thursday as thousands of people fled the escalating violence in the capital, offering fresh evidence that the regime led by President Bashar Assad is starting to unravel.

Street fighting stretched into a fifth day in Damascus, with government soldiers deploying snipers on rooftops and helicopter gunships in flashpoint neighborhoods.

More than 20,000 people were reported to have fled into neighboring Lebanon. Activist groups said more than 55 people were killed in Damascus and its suburbs a day after a bombing in the heart of the city killed three of Assad’s senior advisers.

With a veto by Russia and China of a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have imposed sanctions on Syria effectively heralding an end to diplo-

PESTS » 12A

SYRIA » 20A

Swarming bugs feast on Weld’s dry crops

By Monte Whaley The Denver Post

C R IS IS IN SY R IA

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Members of a jihadist group train Thursday near Aleppo, Syria. Bulent Kilic, AFP/Getty Images

friday, july 20, 2012 B denverpost.com B the denver post

6

SHOTGUN DEMO

How the Waldo Canyon fire unfolded

Chad Gibson watches flames approach his home in Colorado Springs. Photo courtesy Bryan Gibson

Authorities waited two hours after the Waldo Canyon fire breached a predetermined trigger point for evacuations before ordering residents to leave the north part of the Mountain Shadows neighborhood. The south part had been evacuated three days earlier.

25

Pike National Forest

June 26, 2:27 p.m. Fire reported to have jumped Rampart Range Road and entered Queens Canyon

Map area 24 Colorado Springs

PEREGRINE

25

June 26, 4:11 p.m.

Flames spotted on ridge above Mountain Shadows neighborhood June 26, 4:25 p.m. Colorado Springs mayor announces evacuation of all of Mountain Shadows north through the Peregrine neighborhood.

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Waldo Canyon fire final perimeter

mountain shadows Road

June 23, 3:17 p.m. Mountain Shadows south of Chuckwagon Road evacuated

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COLORADO SPRINGS

Chuckw ag on Flying W Ranch

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about 10 minutes before it got to our house. If we hadn’t shown up, my mother would have died in the fire.”

Despite the destruction of homes, the death of a couple in their 70s and the decimation of the mountain landscape, Colorado Springs got lucky, said Thomas Cova, a University of Utah professor who studies evacuations from wildfires.

“To get (thousands of) people out in such short time with no injuries is amazing,” he said.

“If a whole bunch of people would have died, this would have been a far better question about what went wrong. It wasn’t good that they had to go instantly. They could have gone about it more sanely. But they were able to do it.”

Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach acknowledged the close call in a meeting Wednesday with the City Council to discuss lessons learned from the fire.

“Fortunately no one was injured in that evacuation,” Bach said.

“It could have been a lot worse.”

Early in the attack of the fire, managers created a detailed list of “management action points” — better known as “trigger points” — around the fire, according to Rich Harvey, incident commander for the Type 1 team that led the firefight.

Trigger points determine decisions and actions that fire managers will take when the fire reaches those areas, he said.

“Queens Canyon was a trigger point,” Harvey said. “If the fire becomes established in there, there is no good containment, no good place for making a stand between Rampart Range Road and Colorado Springs. ... There are no roads, no trails, no natural barriers.

That was obvious to us.”

Harvey did not know why the evacuation order failed to be announced when the fire began burning in Queens Canyon.

Brown said once the fire comes into city property or city property is in the way of an oncoming fire, the decision to evacuate comes to him.

But he could not answer why it took two hours to issue the order.

“I can’t speak factually to that,” he said.

According to radio traffic, a firefighter at 2:27 p.m. reported the fire had jumped Rampart Range Road and was in Queens Canyon. “It’s starting to drop down into the canyon,” said the firefighter, who identified himself as “Murphy” and was standing on top of Queens Canyon Quarry.

Over the next several minutes, firefighters from different vantage points described the fire behavior as it crept into the canyon.

By 2:40 p.m., Murphy reported “burning material rolling down into the canyon. So the fire is getting down into the bottom of the canyon. Real heavy fire activity on the western lip of the canyon.”

Queens Canyon is a drainage that leads to a mountainside quarry above the city, uphill from the Mountain Shadows neighborhood.

Half of the Mountain Shadows south of Chuckwagon Road

Evacuations delayed

Centennial Blvd.

FIRE «FROM 1A

N mile

Source: City of Colorado Springs; USGS;

had been on mandatory evacuation since June 23.

At 1:44 p.m. June 26, the northern half of the subdivision went on “pre-evacuation notice” — meaning residents were advised to have valuables packed and be ready to go.

Among the 345 homes that burned in Mountain Shadows, 145 were in the northern area of the subdivision.

Harvey said several factors go into deciding which neighborhoods to evacuate: topography, fire behavior, wind direction, types of assets in the way and how many police officers are available to protect the area.

“You don’t want to be slow and you don’t want to be evacuating stuff you don’t need,” he said. “If the fire had stayed on Rampart Range, we would be having a different conversation.”

At 4:13 p.m., Colorado Springs Fire Department Capt. Steve Riker reported flames on the ridge above Mountain Shadows and asked Fire Battalion Chief Ted Collas, “We did do mandatory evacuations ... you said?”

“Negative,” Collas said. “ I will confirm that and make sure it is happening.”

At the same time, federal, city and county officials gathered for a regularly scheduled news conference.

Denver CBS4 TV reporter Rick Sallinger asked Harvey about the consequences of the fire getting into Queens Canyon.

“That’s a good question and a tough answer,” Harvey said.

Just then, at 4:25 p.m., Mayor Bach interrupted Harvey to announce the evacuation of the rest of Mountain Shadows up through the Peregrine neighborhood.

Ted Stefani didn’t hear the warning. He was already packing his car after seeing flames coming down the hill toward

pinon valley Garden of the Gods Road The Denver Post

his home on Charing Court.

“We didn’t need the police to tell us at that point,” said Stefani, whose home was destroyed.

In Mountain Shadows, some homeowners waited for evacuation orders while others became alarmed when smoke obscured the sun and decided to leave.

Bryan Gibson, whose elderly mother was in their house at 5735 Linger Way, said she called him in a panic about the fire.

But when he and his son arrived to get her out, they found her calmly sitting on a couch talking on the phone.

“What are you doing?” he asked. “The fire’s coming down the hill.”

“No, it’s not,” she said.

“Yes, it is,” he insisted.

“It would be on the TV,” she said.

He got his mother into his car and pointed her toward his office a few minutes away. His mother rarely drives, but “in this case, she had to,” he said.

On Linger Way, where 15 of the 19 houses would be destroyed, neighborhood boys ran door to door, banging on doors and ringing doorbells. They found one couple taking an afternoon nap. “They would have perished too, if the boys hadn’t rung their bell,” Gibson said.

“Those boys were heroes.”

In the rush to evacuate, Gibson regrets leaving behind things with sentimental value: his late father’s golf clubs and fishing tackle box, “the things that gave him joy.” His daughter’s artwork. His son’s trophies.

“I think I was thinking wrong,” he said. “I would give a thousand dollars to have five more minutes in that house.”

Not far away, on Rossmere Street, a neighbor watched William Everett pull into his garage as other neighbors were leaving.

Everett and his wife, Barbara, died in the fire, the only fatalities.

Stephen Gandy went up Rossmere Street with his camera, taking photos of the fire that seemed to be building throughout the afternoon.

When he saw a flame jump onto the ridge, he bolted downhill toward his home, which would soon be destroyed.

“Jan,” he told his girlfriend, “we need to go now.”

They were keenly aware of the danger. Each night since the fire erupted, Jan Wilson, a neonatal nurse practitioner, and Gandy set their alarm clock to go off every two hours until dawn. They took turns getting up and looking out the window for signs of a wildfire.

As they escaped about 4:30 p.m., they got a call on their cellphones to leave and saw firefighters driving in to tell people to evacuate.

“The frightening part was people were coming in,” Wilson said. “People coming back to Mountain Shadows were bumper to bumper, trying to get to their homes. Driving on the shoulder. Making turns to the right from the left-hand lane.”

Sue Harrington, whose house on Green Valley Heights survived while others around her burned to the ground, was watching the news conference and was struck by how calm officials seemed.

“I was at my door and the fire was coming down into Flying W Ranch,” she said.

She wonders why she and her neighbors didn’t get an evacuation order sooner. “We all live in Colorado. We know how fast the wind changes,” she said.

“How come nobody thought about that? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that.”

Council president Scott Hente, whose Mountain Shadows home was damaged in the fire, said the city should review its evacuation procedures.

“One of the things we are going to look at very, very strongly is when do you evacuate in certain conditions and what are the trigger points,” he said. “At what point do you risk angering your constituents to try to keep them safe? Those are all valid questions, and I don’t know the answers, which is why we are going to look at them.”

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Saturday, June 23 Noon: Fire reported in Waldo Canyon, west of Colorado Springs. Command team sets trigger points for evacuation, including if fire is “established in Queens Canyon.”

3:17 p.m. Mandatory evacuation ordered for Mountain Shadows neighborhood south of Chuckwagon Road.

Tuesday, June 26 1:44 p.m. Northern Mountain Shadows placed on “pre-evacuation notice.”

2:27 p.m. Firefighter reports fire dropping into Queens Canyon.

2:30 p.m. A different firefighter sees “flare-ups” on western rim of Queens Canyon.

2:40 p.m. Firefighter reports “burning material rolling down into the canyon. ... Heavy fire activity on the western lip of the canyon.”

3:12 p.m. Firefighter at top of Queens Quarry reports heavy, cold ash falling 3:23 p.m. Air-attack pilots confirm fire is “all the way at the bottom of Queens.”

3:32 p.m. Firefighter says fire is “crowning downhill and starting to crown uphill Queens Canyon. I can see flames coming back up on the east side.”

3:33 p.m. Colorado Springs Fire Capt. Steve Riker reports “strange smoke beyond the east side of ravine. We have heavy flames coming down from the west coming into the canyon.”

4:11 p.m. Firefighter announces: “All units. I have fire on the ridge. It’s on the east side of the most east-facing ridge. We need to put that plan in place.”

4:13 p.m. Firefighter: “It’s a very fast moving crown fire that’s starting to come down the ridge a little bit. Still about a third of the way up.”

4:13 p.m. Riker: “We did do mandatory evacuations ... you said?

4:13 p.m. Battalion Chief Ted Collas: “Negative. I will confirm that and make sure it is happening.”

4:25 p.m. Mayor Steve Bach announces evacuation of all of Mountain Shadows

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Stay informed: Follow Denver Post reporters, photographers and editors on Twitter. »denverpost.com/twitter HIGH PAR K FI RE

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

Romney’s road map to winning Colorado His campaign aims to avoid social potholes and hit fiscal solutions.

By Allison Sherry The Denver Post

Insurers face criticism Homeowners: O≠ers falling far short of expected levels

By Steve Raabe The Denver Post

fort collins» Residents whose homes burned in the High Park wildfire packed a Larimer County meeting Wednesday night to criticize the way their claims are being handled by insurance companies.

Homeowners, some in tears and

with breaking voices, complained that insurance-settlement offers are falling far short of expected levels.

People in the crowd of about 130 complained of depreciated insurance-settlement offers that fail to cover rebuilding costs, and difficulty in getting full reimbursement for home contents lost in fires.

A particular aggravation of some speakers was the need to exhaustively document lost personal possessions during an emotionally challenging time.

“Being required to list all personal contents is inhumane after a disaster of this magnitude,” said Dale Snyder,

About the blaze Ignited June 9 by a lightning strike, it was contained by June 30. It was the second-largest wildfire in recorded Colorado history by area burned, after the Hayman Fire of 2002. One person was killed in the fire.

Location: 15 miles west of Fort Collins Acres burned: 87,250 Buildings destroyed or damaged: 259

FIRE » 11A

HOME, SQUEEZE HOME

tampa, fla.» After accepting his party’s nomination Thursday at the Republican National Convention, Mitt Romney’s campaign will narrow its focus in Colorado — rallying conservatives, touting energy independence and eschewing social-conservative branding, according to interviews with Romney strategists and Colorado operatives.

So far, Romney’s approach to winning the pivotal swing state has puzzled pundits because his first two post-primary stops were in the sparsely populated red areas of Craig and Fort Lupton. He didn’t traverse to a purple or a blue voter area; he didn’t go after the ever-elusive suburban-women vote.

But those visits — along with speeches in Grand Junction and Golden — were likely a harbinger of how Romney will operate in the coming 68 days.

He will go to big and small places, delivering speeches about jobs, the national debt and how energy independence leads Colorado out of its 8.3 percent unemployment rate.

“He will have to get the Republican vote out, get the base out to go to the polls,” said Colorado’s state Attorney RNC » 16A

ir Force Reserve Lt. Col. Herb Rose shares hugs with his children — from left, Sophia, 4, Colton, 8, and OakLeigh, 5 — at Sage Canyon Elementary in Castle Rock on Wednesday. Students had gathered in the gym, thinking they were finding out the winner of a raffle. The Rose children were then picked to unwrap a very large box. What a gift it was: When Rose, stationed in Qatar since January, popped out, his kids rushed him.

“I thought it was going to be a bouncy castle,” Colton said, “but this is better.” »8A Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post

A

RYAN VOWS TURNAROUND Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan welcomed “the calling of my generation” to help lead the country in tough times. »17A

Security. Some people, from visitors to downtown business owners, wonder whether the convention security is all a little too much. »18A

CHECK OF VOT E R E LI GI B I LI T Y

88% of those in Colo. run through federal database are U.S. citizens

By Sara Burnett The Denver Post

About 88 percent of the approximately 1,400 suspected noncitizens run through a federal database by the Colorado secretary of state’s office were determined to be U.S. citizens — and are eligible to vote.

The Department of Homeland Security is continuing to review the re-

maining approximately 168 people to determine whether any of them also are citizens, said Michael Hagihara, voter registration manager for the secretary of state’s office.

The results of the checks so far were released during a public hearing Wednesday on how Secretary of State Scott Gessler’s office will move forward with determining whether

anyone still suspected of being a noncitizen should be removed from Colorado’s voter rolls.

That process could begin as early as next week. Gessler’s office is proposing that either he or his deputy secretary of state would preside over a hearing on each case. They also would make the final judgment as to whether the person may legally cast a

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ballot — a proposal critics called “alarming.”

Martha Tierney, an attorney who represents the Colorado Democratic Party, noted that the number of voters still in question equals less than one-thousandth of 1 percent of Colorado’s approximately 3.5 million registered voters. She suggested the ReGESSLER » 15A

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the denver post B denverpost.com B thursday, august 30, 2012

Larimer County residents thanked Dale Snyder, center, with a round of applause for initiating a meeting that was held at the Larimer County Courthouse on Wednesday night. Snyder lost his home to fire June 11. Victims of this summer’s fires complained of how hard it has been to be compensated by insurance companies after having lost homes during a public meeting Wednesday night. Karl Gehring, The Denver Post

FIRE «FROM 1A who lost his Rist Canyon home during the June fire. “It’s extremely painful and time consuming, to say the least.”

Other homeowners said depreciated payments for destroyed homes make rebuilding difficult or impossible.

“If they feel the need to depreciate my policy by that amount, then why did they accept my premium (payment) for that value?” said Trish Garner, who lost her Rist Canyon home.

In many cases, insurers offer settlement amounts based on a percentage of replacement costs. The full value of the policy is not paid until structures are rebuilt and possessions are replaced.

Insurance-industry representatives noted that companies operate within the law and follow standard practices by requiring an accounting of costs and completion of rebuilding

before full reimbursement is made.

State Rep. Claire Levy, DBoulder, garnered applause from the crowd when she said she will introduce legislation in the 2013 session to offer more protection to homeowners in their dealings with insurers.

The legislation would direct insurers to certify that replacement costs accurately reflect local construction costs as well as requiring companies to offer at least partial payments on personal contents without the need for itemization.

Some citizens are calling for Colorado to pass a law that would require insurers to pay upfront the full face value of policies in the event of a total loss, without depreciation and holdbacks.

So-called “valued policy laws” are in effect in 19 states.

Most of those states mandate full reimbursement for lost structures but still require itemized lists for content replacement.

Insurers are listening to homeowner concerns but are

wary about proposals that could increase premiums and encourage fraud, said Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, an industry trade group.

Colorado state Rep. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, has said that while he is not endorsing a valued-policy law, he sees the need for changes that would bring more consistency to insurance policies and claims.

“They’ve been through so much anguish from the fires, and now there seems to be a lot of hassles that people are going through,” Kefalas said. “Maybe we need to get more consistency in how these things are handled.”

Walker said the history of valued-policy laws shows that homeowners in areas with low risk of wildfires or other natural disasters end up paying higher premiums for the benefit of the minority living in high-risk areas.

Steve Raabe: 303-954-1948, sraabe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/steveraabedp

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