Waldo Canyon Colorado fire started near popular hiking trail

"A resident in Crystal Park reported seeing smoke in the hills north of Cave of the Winds at 7:49 p.m. June 22."

7/6/12, "Colorado wildfire: Ridge along hiking trail may contain origin of catastrophic Waldo Canyon Fire," Denver Post, Meyer and Ingold

"This is the same place we had fire last night."

"The deadly Waldo Canyon fire appears to have started just off a hiking trail west of Colorado Springs, a location that firefighters searched unsuccessfully the day before the wind-fanned blaze exploded June 23.

Although El Paso County Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Kramer said he was "not at liberty" to reveal the precise point of origin, coordinates posted on a federal fire-management website and dispatch recordings of conversations between firefighters indicate the fire started on a ridge along the popular Waldo Canyon hiking trail....

The fire was officially reported at about noon June 23....

The El Paso County Sheriff's Office late Saturday night issued a news release confirming that a resident in Crystal Park reported seeing smoke in the hills north of Cave of the Winds at 7:49 p.m. June 22.

Firefighters from four agencies responded to investigate but disbanded the search at dusk. Firefighters returned the next morning.

"Could it be a campfire?" one firefighter asks on archived dispatch recordings from June 22.

Winds dispersing the smoke made it difficult to find the source....

"We hiked around there for quite a while," the unidentified firefighter said over the dispatch recording. "There was nothing at that time. But it looks like it was there."

Reached on Thursday by The Denver Post, a member of the Cascade Fire Department refused to talk about the fire's first days, saying he needed approval from the federal incident team before talking to media."...

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"Densely populated neighborhoods hugging parched mountainsides are especially vulnerable, Navarro said."

7/4/12, "Colorado wildfire: Former chief "knew" Waldo Canyon would happen," Denver Post, Lee

"As chief, he always knew that those foothills neighborhoods were susceptible to exactly what happened last week.

In a 2004 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette, Navarro was among fire officials trying to get out the word that "a monster sleeps on the Front Range, ready to awaken, ready to kill and ready to destroy.

A firefighter for more than four decades, Navarro, now a division chief for the Menlo Park Fire Department in northern California, has seen his share of disastrous wildfires. He was a battalion chief in Oakland, Calif., in the early 1990s when a wildfire charred 3,300 homes and killed 26 people....

After Navarro became chief of the Colorado Springs Fire Department years later, he pushed residents to prepare their yards for possible wildfires. Navarro implemented a fire-mitigation program, which he said was nationally recognized when he left the department four years ago....

As chief, Navarro often talked publicly about an impending wildfire — that "it's not a matter of if, but when a fire will ignite."

"There's patterns of behavior for fires. In Colorado, the hot dry summers and wind gusts contribute to those patterns, and fires will happen," Navarro said.

Among the many cities that dot the Front Range, Navarro believed Colorado Springs faced the greatest risk for destruction from a wildfire. Densely populated neighborhoods hugging parched mountainsides are especially vulnerable, Navarro said."...

via Tom Nelson (Ed. note: Please excuse bright white background behind this post. It was done by hackers.)