As you may or may not know my wife Ashley is a firefighter for Manitou Springs fire. She was called in on Saturday morning to work Hwy 24 and try to keep the fire from jumping the highway and head into Manitou Springs.
Here is a pretty cool map of all the fire activity in the country that I found. http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~starbird/TtT_Fires_map_byEvent.html
Anyway I thought I would share a couple of pictures, the first two are from unknown source the last 4 she took with her iPhone. Hopefully they contain this soon so she can come home this week sometime.
I am adding pictures and video to this post as she sends them to me to keep checking back.
Saturday night
Saturday night
Saturday afternoon on the drive in
Sunday afternoon
Sunday Night looking up the canyon from Manitou
Monday mid-day
Monday mid-day
Monday mid-day, same for the video below.
Monday afternoon
Smoke is knocking everything down from the sky
Monday afternoon
Monday afternoon
Loner truck from another dept that Ashley is using
Tuesday lunch- thought she was coming home today but the fire grew to the south and is threating Cave of the Winds. This is the parking lot, she is on structure protection there now.
Off the back deck at Cave of the Winds Tuesday 1pm
2 pictures above are off the back deck at Cave of the Winds Tuesday about 1pm, you can see the slurry bomber heading in on the 1st photo. This is about 1/4 of a mile from Cave of the Winds.
Slurry bombers Tuesday 3pm trying to protect Cave of the Winds
View of the fire coming down into the neighborhood about 7-8pm
Stopped on her way to the northside of the fire in Colorado Springs to pick up more help. Lots of firefighters but no trucks or equipment for them to help.
No words for the rest of the photos as it goes through the neighborhoods
Taken from the Colorado Springs Newspaper Facebook feed, just thought it was a cool photo.
Sad
Wednesday Morning
Slurry bombers Tuesday 3pm trying to protect Cave of the Winds
Taken 4pm Tuesday, location unknown
So about 8pm last night my wife called and she got pulled from Cave of the Winds and sent up to the northside with 4 trucks to try and save some homes. LOTS of homes were lost as you most likely saw on the news.
Wednesday 7/24: My wife was sent back into the neighborhoods about 1pm to try and save some houses. She was hoping to come home today for a break but they needed the truck that she drives.
Pump baby pump!!!!
The fire is about 30-50 feet behind this house, they were losing the battle as the flames were rushing up the hill towards the house when a helicopter came over and dumped its load on the fire right in front of them.
Thursday AM: So last night Ashley was released last night and headed home. Much deserved break for her! She is off until Sunday 7/1 when she goes in for her normal shift of Sun/Mon. Hopefully by then the fire will be more under control and not threatening any structures so she does not get pulled into it again. If she does get pulled back into the fire I will start a new blog post, this will be the last update on this one. Below are a couple more things to share.
This helicopter drop saved this house, they were about to lose the house when it just showed up. This happened on Wed and is the same neighborhood as photo above the firefighter and deer.
Manitou Springs Fire in action
