A “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning was issued Wednesday for parts of the San Luis Valley and up through Buena Vista and Leadville, an alert Chaffee County’s fire chief says she’s never seen before.
“We have never experienced a PDS in this valley,” said Kira Jones, chief of the Chaffee County Fire Protection District. “I’ve lived here for 20 years, and we’ve never entered into these conditions before.”
Jones explained that the rare National Weather Service designation was driven by extreme wind forecasts and bone-dry air.
“For us in the mountains, that looks like 45 miles an hour, whereas down in the San Luis Valley … they’re looking at winds in the 50‑plus mile an hour range,” she said. “That feels almost like the outskirts of a hurricane‑force wind, and that makes things become even drier.”
She said humidity was expected in “the single digits … between 7 and 8%. That’s really dry.” Coupled with “lack of moisture, snow runoff very quickly and no rain, the fuels are even more primed for a fire to spread and to spread quickly.”
Jones said the department’s top priority was clear: “Our number one priority is always life safety,” she said. “We want to try to create as big of a box as quickly as possible to provide those folks with enough time to be able to leave.
"I think about the Marshall Fire when we’re talking these high winds up here. It’s really triggering for a lot of people. It was very scary, but that’s the conditions that we could be facing up here.”
Firefighters and volunteers were on high alert.
“We have communicated with all of our membership the conditions that we are facing,” she said. “We have mutual aid. We all help and come together. It’s not about jurisdictions. It’s about protecting the community and doing the right thing by the community.”
Although the PDS expired at 7 p.m., Jones noted the red flag warning remained in place until midnight and the fire danger will continue.
“These are unprecedented conditions across the state of Colorado,” she said. “We’re doing our best to try to have a plan and try to respond appropriately while keeping life safety in mind, that’s always number one.”
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