Damage Toll Mounts From Colorado’s Largest Wildfire

(Denver, CO)   —  The most destructive wildfire in Colorado history
continues to turn homes into ashes.  The High Park Fire near Fort
Collins has destroyed at least 248 homes.  Approximately 12-hundred of
the 43-hundred homeowners evacuated from the fire were permitted to
return to their homes yesterday.  The Waldo Canyon fire has grown to
more than 25-hundred acres and forced thousands of people in the
Colorado Springs area to clear out.  At least ten fires are now
burning across Colorado.  Governor John Hickenlooper acknowledged this
weekend that some of the fires have been intentionally set.

As fire crews battle more than half a dozen fires
across the state of Colorado, people in the Denver area are enduring
triple-digit heat.  The temperature soared to 102 degrees yesterday,
the third straight day of 100-degree weather and  there doesn’t appear
to be any let up in the heat.