Colorado wildfire claims second fatality, 360 homes burned

Community leaders began notifying residents Thursday that their homes were destroyed. Lists of the heavily damaged streets were posted at a high school, and residents scanned the sheets, but for many, the notification was a formality. They had already recognized their streets on the aerial pictures that appeared in the news.

"The blanket that was on my bed when I grew up, a bunch of things my mother had made," said Rick Spraycar, listing what he lost when his house in the hard-hit Mountain Shadows subdivision burned down. "It's hard to put it into words. Everything I owned. Memories."

For Ernie Storti the pain of knowing that his was one of a handful of homes spared in his neighborhood was hard.

"Our home was standing, and everything south of us was gone," he said as tears streamed down his face outside a Red Cross Shelter where he had met with insurance agents.

Authorities were still trying to figure out what caused the fire. They said conditions were too dangerous to allow them in to start their investigation.

More than 1,000 personnel and six helicopters were fighting the fire.

All eight Air Force firefighting planes from four states will be at Colorado Springs' Peterson Air Force Base Saturday and available to fight the fire, marking the first time the entire fleet has been activated since 2008, Col. Jerry Champlin said.

Among the fires elsewhere in the West:

— At least 60 homes near Pocatello, Idaho, burned in a fast-moving wildfire that started Thursday evening. The blaze covered more than 1½ square miles. Officials said it was human-caused but gave no details.

— A 70-square-mile wildfire in Utah destroyed at least 160 structures, more than 50 of them primary homes. Another blaze in Utah doubled in size to 70 square miles and was threatening about 75 structures. And a wildfire that erupted Friday in a foothills community near Salt Lake City destroyed at least two homes and was threatening 200 others.

Blazes also burned in Wyoming and Montana.

Authorities battling six wildfires in Utah said Colorado was taking most of the available fire crews, leaving them short-handed.

Fire commander Cheto Olais said leaders at one Utah blaze had requested about 200 additional firefighters but will probably get no more than 20. "A lot of assets are going to Colorado," Olais said.

IN PICTURES: Wildfires sweep across the west

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Associated Press writers Dan Elliott, Rema Rahman and Catherine Tsai in Denver, Brian Skoloff in Salt Lake City, Paul Foy in Price, Utah, Matthew Brown in Roundup, Mont., and Matt Volz in Helena, Mont., contributed to this report.

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