I wish them all a quick recovery. The federal government, which they all hate so vehemently, is going to help. And no doubt, they have their hands out.

There's actually a city-planning aspect adding to the devastation of the fires: new subdivisions were built too close to one another and too close to fire-prone woodlands. Moreover, because city regulations require that all cul-de-sacs be large enough to turn a fire engine around in, developers who wanted a greater density of suburban homes created private streets too small to service with fire engines. So now they're fucked.

Maybe the Islamic god did it?

That's a hell of a smiting.

@ 3, since it's the Springs, they also lacked other regulations concerning building and roofing materials. Not to mention anything to rein in development.

Our governor, who can be something of an oil and gas shill, had this to say the other day when local conservatives tried to blame Obama for the lack of tanker planes (cuts which, of course, came from the Bush administration): "Were these the same conservatives that were so worried about the Obama administration spending too much money, or were these different conservatives?"

http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci…

It's interesting in the aerial photos how much landscaping around totally destroyed homes was left intact, including large pine trees immediately adjacent.

I hope someone does a study of the kinds of siding and other exposed materials that were used on the burned homes. I think there are some lessons to be learned and building codes to be altered.

The other day I was looking at Google Satellite views of the outskirts of Boulder near the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), where another fire briefly threatened destruction. Many homes in the "university streets" have mature landscaping such as junipers, other dense shrubs, and small trees that are overgrown and crowded up against the houses and under the eaves. In Colorado Springs the surviving pine trees appear to have open crowns well above roof height; maybe they were native trees left in place under the development plan (though many trees outside of the housing tracts were dead because of beetle infestations, survivable if there is sufficient irrigation or natural precipitation).

These photos make me sad for the families. It's scary to think that this is likely only the tip of the iceberg for the Colorado wildfire season. The beetle-kill epidemic has essentially stock-piled wildfire fuel across all the forests in the state. This is an unavoidable byproduct of several million acres worth of trees dying inside a decade.

A lot of newer houses also have thermostatically controlled roof fans that reduce the load on air conditioning by pulling in outside air and blowing out the trapped attic air that can easily reach 120-140 degrees on a sunny day.

The problem is that fresh air is drawn in through vents under the eaves or on gable ends, which in a fire could bring in hot gas and sparks, and then provide plenty of oxygen for combustion. Seems like such fans should have a kill switch that can be hit as you're evacuating, or better, be somehow disabled automatically by a smoke sensor.

@9, there will be no learning from this. There never is. People still build in the hills over Malibu that burn every second or third year, by design (it's how the regional plants propagate). They know they'll get all the disaster relief they want, because they are white and rich.

Building lunatic suburban developments right in the middle of fire zones is part of the American Way.

There's a lot to be said about living in high density cities as opposed to cul-de-sacs out in the burbs. But I am sure since many of the victims are good conservatives this just is an opportunity presented to them by GOD to pull themselves up by their boot straps without any Federal or State assistance.

@12, attempting to rape an angel is just like attempting to rape a down pillow or inflatable doll.

It appears that God hates McMansions with three-car garages.

@9: perhaps you saw me in those images, looking up and waving at the satellite. City and County of Boulder both put money into "fuel mitigation" in the open spaces around the edge of town. They get that money from taxes that Boulder citizens voted to impose on themselves, presumably because we are socialists. And, yeah, we have all sorts of socialistic not to mention fascistic rules against wood shake roofs and so on, that infringe on a man's right to live free, not underneath the heel of oppressive government. All that said, we're still vulnerable, even if we are socialists, and getting more so as the climate gradually gets hotter and drier. We'll vote for federal disaster relief when the quake hits Seattle, hope you guys can return the favor if we need it. What saved our asses this time round is that the town is downhill from the heavily wooded mountains that burned. Fire doesn't like to go downhill; check out this video and blogpost:

http://badmomgoodmom.blogspot.com/2012/0…

The people who live in the mountains west of Boulder have been pretty badly ravaged by fires these last couple years. We know one family that took the risk super-seriously, made their lot a sort of fire fortress incorporsating the sorts of ideas Rob! mentions and others, and sure enough, their house was undamaged two years ago while the wildlands on all sides of their property burnt. But they propably also caught a little luck, too.

@21, Colorado's trial-by-fire is personal for me. I know somebody who lives on Vassar in Boulder and works at NCAR. My cousin lives outside Fort Collins and the High Park fire got within 3 miles of his home. The son of good friends serves on the fire crews now working in Colorado.

I think Boulder and the Springs would make a great compare-and-contrast study, and I hope people are open to learning from experience.

See...the reason it's called "reporting" and not "transcribing" is because someone goes there and reports what he sees...not what he read.

I was in Fort Collins all this week, and yes, while the sparse populated rural mountain forests burned, the suburbs where I stayed, first near Horsetooth and then on Harmony drive were alive and well...on only two nights could I even smell the fires.

And by the end of the trip there were thunderstorms.

See, nuance is discerning the various gradations to get to the truth...and that requires...legwork.

The thing about making your mountain lot a fire fortress, is that a lot of people see the fun of living in the mountains is exactly having your wood panelled, shake-shngled house nestled in among the blue spruce etc. They don't want to live in a poured concrete house in the middle of a gravel-covered lot. And I see the appeal, although it's not for me -- I want to be able to walk to stores, music, bars, work. One way to think about it is that your house up there, and the stuff you keep in it, is just a temporary thing. Every 20 years or so you just expect it to burn. Think of it like a Shinto purification ritual.... If you could adopt that attitude, and believe it, that get burned out every two decades is the price of your otherwise idyllic life, that could be ok. The issue is mainly losing your stuff, not your life. The actual risk of dying is pretty small if you are healthy and mobile. The people who get killed tend to be either elderly, less mobile folk, or else firefighters, or firefighter wannabes, as in the Oakland fires. Also pets.

Living in the mountains of the west, not taking fire nitigation steps, AND expecting the rest of society to keep your house from burning down, that's not so reasonable.

My guess is that the folks in the Springs thought of their hillside subdivisions as just like a real city, but without the taxes that just encourages wasteful government. Those homes are mostly really new -- people moved in there during the big expansion of the last 15 years, mostly from out of state, not knowing what they were getting into. The realator probably didn't have them sign a waiver saying "I know I'm dong something a little crazy."

@3: i'd be surprised if any fire dept. in amercia allowed private streets that didn't meet fire lane minimums. lots of ways to do that without cul de sacs.

@25: "@3: i'd be surprised if any fire dept. in amercia allowed private streets that didn't meet fire lane minimums." Try Seattle, which allows substandard access to interior units in the process of permitting "unit lot subdivisions." I questioned the City Fire Marshall about this in front of the hearing examiner a couple years ago, and he dissembled and avoided the issue; Seattle Fire Dept will not stand up to DPD and Council and demand fire-safe permitting. The construction of some the units allowed by the City is a disaster waiting to happen.

god gave moses the rainbow sign: no more water, the fire next time

noah, or whatever the bible thumpers believe..

@5

Or maybe it's just the wrath of God visited upon them for their homophobia...?

If the evangelicals have to pick between "God is burning down your houses because of your homophobia" or "God is burning down your houses because you just aren't homophobic enough," which one do you think is going to win?

@25: You are right about fire departments will allow, but there are ways around it. A lot of sudivisions in Colorado are built outside of city limits exactly so they don't have to deal with various issues like fire department regulations and other intrusive measures that prevent them from exercising their right to, as they say in New Hampshire "Live Cheap and Die.". After the subdivisions are built, the residents often try to contract a certain amount of emergency services from the fire department in town. Alternatively, lots of subdivisions that don't seem so very rural in nature all the same rely on volunteer fire departments for both fire and paramedic-type response. In this model all they have to contract with is an ambulance service. The volunteer model works if you have the right demographics, with enough people of the right age to find beig a volunteer firefighter fun and rewarding. Some volunteer firedepartments are impressively good. They do a lot of the esrliest and most dangerous work on the wildfires you read about, before there are well-defined "fronts", when it's all more free form and of necessity chaotic. They stand down, exhausted, when the feds arrive to take over.

Yawn. I haven't paid any attention to the news here regarding the fire in "ground zero". I couldn't care less that they're burning.

@29 I would remind them, "As you sow, so shall ye reap." I would also remind them of the etymology of that word they love to throw around, "faggot." The people who would throw some of God's variant children on the fire, have in turn been thrown on the fire. QED.

are the fire lanes 20' wide or not? do the turnarounds meet the fire code or not? are all sides of the building within 150' of the fire lane? seattle does not allow "substandard" fire access. i've tried.

Colorado Springs is a suburb of what? Colorado Springs???

@32, the word for a burning brand is "fagot", not faggot. If you're going to do wordplay, get the words right.

@35, its official name is the Waldo Canyon Fire; it's mainly northwest of Colorado Springs.

http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2929/

Nature has little to do with the changing climate that is driving these record fires.

@32, @36, no version of "faggot" or "fagot" means "burning brand". It means "bundle of sticks" (along the lines of "fascia", from which "fascist") or a pressed-meat mixture similar to a sausage, with no casing. A "fag" is not only a cigarette but a junior boy servant at an English public (i.e., private) school.

"Faggot" for "homosexual" has nothing to do with bundles of sticks, burning or otherwise, but from a usage for "old woman".

The two spellings of the word are not differentiated, other than that "fagot" isn't really English at all and is never encountered, at least not for several hundred years.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term… for starters.

@38 --True enough ... what's your point?????

Charles Mudede channeling his inner Paul Robertson?

I have family out there. I guess keep them in your thoughts not your prayers. Apparently you believe God is punishing Colorado Springs for the excesses of a few.

@36, 40 I direct your attention to this British dictionary entry where you may take note of two things:

1) The spellings are regional, two g's in Britain, one in N. Amer.

2) Indeed it is a bundle of sticks, but note the words for fuel.

Also, this means nothing, but it's sometimes fun to see which spelling gets used most often in which situation. Google the phrase, "Throw another faggot on the fire," and measure the counts vs. "Throw another fagot on the fire."

@43, oh please. (N Amer) my fanny. No one seriously uses "fagot" today unless they are self-consciously trying to avoid a "bad word" (cf. people saying "the n word"). In reality, nobody anywhere under the age of 85 uses this word in any sense for fear of being thought a homophobic bigot -- or alternately uses it expressly for the purpose of being thought a homophobic bigot, which is a popular stance in places like...Colorado Springs.

"For fuel" pretty explicitly excludes "firebrand" which is used for light, yeah?

Anyways, to get back to the subject at hand, you have to admire the audacity of "Esther Fleece, director of millennial relations for Focus on the Family". Director of Millennial Relations! Fantastic. Do you think this is a job title that's likely to subside in importance in coming years? "Director of Things That Happened a Couple of Decades Ago" doesn't sound like a career with a future.

Also, Michelle Malkin lives in Colorado Springs. Reflect, my children, on the emotions that would course through your veins should Ms. Malkin's worldly goods be taken in this conflagration. Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel.

Schadenfreude: the spaghetti monster demands it.

@42 Nobody here believes in a God, primate or otherwise.
This is sarcasm.

@44 On the subject of admiring audacity, I still haven't got over the Newspeak-y organization titles of NOM and FOTF. WTF? How dare they!

NOM left the words "For Restricting" out of their name, and "Focus" seems to want us to heartlessly purge our families of those born gay, trans, etc. Restrictive, heartless "Christians" are anything but Christians*.

Spread the love or die in a fire (figurative or literal), I say to them.

___________
* Just because some hateful schmoes appropriate a previously-defined name doesn't mean the rest of us should simply accept that label. Even if they're in a minority, those who are invested in being selfless, charitable, loving, and accepting, and who point to examples of Christ's teachings as a basis of a religion for promoting just that, are proof enough that we shouldn't allow the title "Christian" to become defined solely by those who do the opposite. Okay, I'm probably being unreasonably idealistic here, but fuck the haters and their self-defined bizarro-world religion. I'm taking back the title, even as I reject the dogma and question the literal existence of God. For me, being a Christian is a matter of loving behavior towards others, you know, the way Gandhi spoke of Christ or the way Jews idealize being a mensch. No, you don't need religion to do that, but for the religion, it ought to be a prerequisite.

pretty fucking smug, chuckles, coming from one who live next to one of the most dangerous fault lines in the world. let's see how your precious urban landscape, built upon itself, withstands a 9.0 quake. and how about that mt st helens? that caused a bit of destruction, now din't it?

these fires are the result of decades of bad land management (thinning the wrong trees, fire suppression altering the natural fire regime) and of course the result of people not understanding (or simply choosing to ignore) the risks involved with living amidst the tall trees.

Did nobody want to point out that they think this was started by arson. Quite possibly some idiot trying to incite exactly the headline Charles wrote. Sure that subdivision pushed up into a canyon has always been at risk of a fire running over it, but it isn't god's work if someone started this intentionally. So why are you even mildly celebrating arson???

@49, Charles isn't denying the earthquake potential in the PNW like fundies deny the role played by climate change in fueling these record fires. Can you tell the difference between a) looking at the world with your eyes wide open and b) believing the flying spaghetti monster is behind it all?

@ 51, I saw a woman on the news mulling the arson over. Her observation? "The devil walks among us."

Schadenfreude: the spaghetti monster demands it.

Keep in mind that according to Christian dogm...er, doctrine...not only can THE LORD rain vengeance upon His minions, but SATAN may be involved as well. The DEVIL is one bad hombre, and I wouldn't be surprised to see him up to his Satanic tricks in Colorado Springs.

Of course, GOD - all-powerful & all that He is - could wipe out that ol' DEVIL if He really wanted to. But I suspect THE LORD keeps SATAN around because a little DEVIL mischief here & there is kinda good for the GOD business!