Elk Fire Prompts Evacuations of Town’s Northern Subdivisions
Faced with flood last month and continuing wildfire concern — and as yet no Biblical prospect of swarms of locusts — Lake City residents and visitors continue to make the best of an at-times challenging situation in the wake of the Elk Fire. The southern boundary of the wildfire is now estimated to be roughly a mile and a half to the north/northwest of Lake City at Larson Creek.As of mid-week this week and following 0.2” rain which dampened grass and brush and slowed the growth of the fire, the expanded fire now static encompassing a total of 7,404.8 acres with 35 percent containment. Containment refers to the portion of the fireline reasonably considered to be controlled, with 35 percent of the fire’s perimeter line, largely to the northwest and northern Alpine Plateau Road.Notable are the residents of 42 homes and associated structures to the immediate north of Lake City in San Juan Springs and San Juan Hills Subdivision on the west side of Highway 149 who evacuated from their homes last Friday, August 7, due to southerly expansion of the Elk Fire.Highly populated San Juan Springs and San Juan Hills are at the southern end of Zone HNS-E003A which includes addresses on San Juan Springs Drive, Rocky Springs Drive, Silver Springs Drive, Elk Road, Deer Trail, and Eagle Drive, the evacuation zone extending northward on the west side of Highway 149 past Valley View and Lake Fork Hunting & Fishing to the Independence Gulch Trailhead in Lake Fork Canyon.Residents of those subdivisions have found shelter at other locations, some temporarily occupying vacant homes elsewhere in Lake City in Riverside Estates or further up valley above Lake San Cristobal, while some have temporarily found new addresses further afield at hotels in Gunnison, Almont, Montrose, and Grand Junction.Hinsdale County Emergency Manager keeps constantly apprised of the fire situation and on Wednesday and Thursday mornings this week was joined by Hinsdale County Sheriff Denim Starnes and Undersheriff Jordan Kaminski at meetings with members of the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team to review Lake Fork Valley evacuation status. At Wednesday morning’s meeting, it was concluded not to change evacuation status but to meet again — with the possibility of possibly relaxing the home exit requirement on Thursday.Hinsdale County’s goal, as expressed in a communique from County Administrator Sandy Hines on Wednesday, “is to return those who have evacuated back to their homes safely and reduce evacuation statuses as soon as possible.”“However,” Hines continues, “the County team does not want to make a decision to change evacuation status prematurely. The plan is to have families to be able to return to their homes and stay there.”Paradoxical in evaluating evacuation zones is pre-planning in the event rains on burn scars in the high country might also result in destructive mud and debris flows at lower elevations.A significant factor in whether the north Lake City evac-uation zone will be lessened is completion of a construction of a new fireline — which began Wednesday — at the southeast edge of the fire above San Juan Springs Subdivision and Town of Lake City. The new fireline is being built with aid of bulldozer and utilizing a high trained hot shot crew specializing in fireline construction in rugged terrain. Hinsdale County E003A and HNS- Reassuring speakers at last Friday night’s public meeting on the Elk Fire, top to bottom at left, were Gunnison National Forest Administrator Megan Eno, Rocky Mountain Team 1 Operations Section Chief Travis Lipp, Hinsdale Emergency Manager Phil Graham, and Incident Commander Austin Baker; below, Travis Lipp with fire map and meeting attendees. E002 — latter a large mostly unpopulated swath surrounding the fire footprint to the west in Uncompahgre Wilderness Area — remain in evacuation mode as of press time.Neighboring zones north of Lake City to both the east and west of Highway 149 remain in the yellow “get set to evacuate” category, including HNS-E003B (north side of Pete’s Lake and areas to the north of the Country Store, including Riverside Estates), Town of Lake City and lower Henson Creek (HNS-E016), San Juan Ranch Estates (HNS-E004), HNS-E005, west side Highway 149 from Independence Gulch Trailhead to county line, including Randy and Alena Haskell, and Jeff Moler; and HNS-E006, east side of Highway 149 from Valley View Ranch to county line.Teams overseeing the Elk Fire started last month last month with Wyoming Type 2 and Northwest Team 8, and were followed in 14-day increments this month by Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 1, Justin Conrad Commander, which was succeeded by Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 2, Rodney Redinger and Alan Sinclair Incident Commanders, effective 7 a.m. Sunday, August 9.Each of the teams build on successes set in place by prior teams working within a grid work in which Uncompahgre Wilderness and public lands to the west of the Elk Fire are classified Division M, Divisions Alpha and X-Ray to the east of Highway 149, and Division G (for Golf) to the south surrounding Town of Lake City.The new fireline now under construction for protection of Town of Lake City and San Juan Springs Subdivision, for instance, is under the purview of a hot shot crew working in Division G.On the cusp of the change over from Rocky Mountain Team 1 to Rocky Mountain Team 2 last Saturday, an especially insightful public meeting was held in the gymnasium at Lake City Community School Friday evening, August 7. A recurrent theme at the meeting and open forum which followed was the need for “patience” and that it is likely some degree of smoke will continue for the foreseeable future until the smoldering fire is finally put out by snow.In his fire behavior report, Brandon Fischer told the capacity audience “snow needs to fly really soon.” He referred to recent intermittent rainfall as a “blip in the radar” in terms of making up for historically low snowpack, in the 10 to 20 percent range last winter and spring. Snowpack effectively went off the ground March
