Wildland firefighting victories overshadowed by major fires in 2020

CENTENNIAL, Colo — The 2020 Colorado wildfire season burned a record 678,246 acres which included the three biggest fires in state history.

That grabbed the majority of the attention last year, and rightfully so, but somewhere lost in that shuffle were some major victories by wildland firefighters.

The chief of Colorado’s Division of Fire Prevention and Control, Mike Morgan, said in a press conference Thursday that there were about 5,300 fire starts in Colorado in 2020. Only 16 of those grew into large named fires under state control.

“It’s aggressive initial attack. That’s what we should be doing on threatening fires,” said Morgan.

Morgan said the State took that approach in 2020 and spent money aggressively, especially when it came to the aerial attack. He said that resulted in even some of the large named fires being victories.

Read more on this story at News 9

 

Latest Print Edition

Latest Articles

Related articles

00:00
00:00