![]() ![]() Dick Good made water drops from the helicopter and ferried more firefighters up to H2 from a meadow at Canyon Creek Estates.īy 3:30 pm, forty-nine men and women were hard at work. By midday, more smokejumpers and ten hotshots from Prineville, Oregon, were ferried in to work down the West Flank line. Mackey questioned the plan but ultimately agreed. The forecast called for a dry cold front with 25-mile-per-hour winds and stronger gusts.īlanco suggested cutting a line on the western, windward side of the ridge. They cleared a second landing spot, “H2,” lower along the ridge, while the jumpers dug a line connecting it to “H1.” When the fire blew up that afternoon, this ridge-top line became the divide between life and death.Īt 9:30 am, the BLM’s helicopter crew-pilot Dick Good and helitack foreman Rich Tyler-picked up Blanco and Mackey for a reconnaissance flight. On July 6, Blanco hiked in again with a crew of ten. While they started digging a fire line, jumper-in-charge Don Mackey called for top-level firefighters, known as hotshots, and for helicopter and air tanker support. ![]() Blanco requested firefighters and aircraft, and his crew cleared a helicopter landing spot, known as “H1,” on the ridge.Įight smokejumpers-firefighters who parachute into remote areas-arrived that evening. On July 5, Blanco’s crew of six attacked the fire, climbing up a steep gulch on the east side of Hell’s Gate Ridge-what would become the next day’s escape route. On July 4, US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) engine foreman James “Butch” Blanco surveyed the fire from Interstate 70. On July 3, a resident of nearby South Canyon made the first report, and the blaze was tagged as the “South Canyon Fire.” From July 2 to July 5, residents of the Canyon Creek Estates subdivision west of Storm King nervously watched the fire grow from one acre to fifty. One was atop Hell’s Gate Ridge, a ridge of sandstone on the southern flank of Storm King Mountain, six miles west of Glenwood Springs. On July 2, a dry lightning storm sparked fifteen new fires in northwest Colorado. Western states were locked in a drought in 1994, and by early summer wildfires were burning across the region. Investigations of the disaster forced numerous reforms in wildland firefighting, and today a memorial hiking trail reminds both locals and tourists of the sacrifice made by the “Storm King 14.” Fire on Storm King Mountain On July 6, high winds stoked the fire into a deadly conflagration that killed fourteen firefighters. The South Canyon Fire began in early July 1994 on Storm King Mountain, in Garfield County west of Glenwood Springs. ![]()
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