Obama flies in, sees ruin in Colorado

President Barack Obama talks with firefighters Friday as he tours the Mountain Shadow neighborhood devastated by wildfires in Colorado Springs, Colo.
President Barack Obama talks with firefighters Friday as he tours the Mountain Shadow neighborhood devastated by wildfires in Colorado Springs, Colo.

— Firefighters searching for bodies in the nearly350 homes burned by the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history found a second body Friday at a residence where another person was discovered dead earlier.

As crews on the front lines made slow but steady progress against the flames, Police Chief Pete Carey said fewer than 10 people were unaccounted for. The remains of one person were found Thursday in what was left of one home. Carey confirmed that the remains of a second person who lived there were found Friday.

The 26-square-mile Waldo Canyon blaze - one of several burning out of control across the tinder-dry West - was reported to be 25 percent contained Friday night, and authorities began lifting some of the evacuation orders for the more than 30,000 people who fled their homes a few days ago.

Full containment is expected about July 16.

After growing explosively earlier in the week, the fire gained no ground overnight, authorities reported Friday. And the weather was clear and mostly calm, a welcome break from the lightning and high wind that previously drove the flames.

“The focus for today is to hold what we got,” extend the firebreaks to contain more of the blaze and move in more heavy equipment, said Rich Harvey, incident commander for the fire.

Exhausted firefighters fresh from the front lines described the devastation in some neighborhoods and the challenges of battling such a huge blaze.

“It looks like hell. I would imagine it felt like a nuclear bomb went off. There was fire everywhere. Everything had a square shape to it because it was foundations,” said Rich Rexach, who has been working 12-hour days since Tuesday, when flames swept through neighborhoods in the city of more than 400,000 people 60 miles south of Denver.

“Everything you put water on, it was just swallowing it,” he said.

President Barack Obama toured the stricken areas Friday after issuing a disaster declaration for Colorado that frees up federal funds. He thanked firefighters and other emergency workers, saying: “The country is grateful for your work. The country’s got your back.” He later stopped at a YMCA shelter, where he was greeted with cheers and told volunteers, “You guys are making us proud.”

Before landing in Colorado Springs, Air Force One took the president for an aerial view northwest of the city as plumes rose from several fires.

The president said he was stunned by what he saw. “You have a house that’s cinders. Next to it, it’s untouched,” said Obama.

He had special words for a group of firefighters who had just recently managed to save some houses in a subdivision attacked by the flames.

“They’re genuine heroes,” he said. He was accompanied by Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and members of the state’s congressional delegation.

Obama’s appearance in Colorado is less than five months before the Nov. 6 presidential election. Colorado is a crucial swing state in the contest between Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

The Waldo Canyon fire is still a threat to more than 20,000 houses and 160 businesses, and the cost for battling it so far is $5.2 million, the Incident Information System website said.

As residents waited anxiously to see what was left of their homes, police reported several burglaries in evacuated areas, along with break-ins of cars packed with evacuees’ possessions outside hotels.

Two people were arrested after police said they broke into homes behind firebreaks Thursday. People returning to homes not damaged by the flames reported home and car burglaries or thefts, said Carey, who said he hopes to direct more police to the evacuated areas soon.

Carey said Friday that a person wearing protective fire gear in an evacuated area was arrested on charges of impersonating a firefighter and influencing a public official.

“We were able to stop him and identify that person as somebody that probably wasn’t someone who belonged on that scene,” Carey said. He didn’t have the person’s name.

Earlier this month, authorities accused a man of impersonating a firefighter at two other Colorado wildfires.

Community leaders began notifying residents Thursday that their homes had been destroyed. Lists showing the streets where houses were destroyed or heavily damaged were posted at a high school. 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 news reports.

“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 knowing that his was one of a handful of homes spared in his neighborhood was also 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 people and six helicopters were fighting the blaze.

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

The Waldo Canyon fire is one of the worst in the West. It ignited as Colorado firefighters were battling a huge blaze near Fort Collins. That fire, known as the High Park fire, has burned through more than 87,000 acres and is about 85 percent contained. Full containment is expected by Sunday.

Another major blaze, in terms of a potential threat to a populated area, is the Flagstaff fire near Boulder, where more than 300 acres have been destroyed. That fire is 40 percent contained, with full containment expected today, according to city officials.

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 11/2 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 began 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.

Information for this article was contributed by P. Solomon Banda, Thomas Peipert, Dan Elliott, Rema Rahman, Catherine Tsai, Brian Skoloff, Paul Foy, Matthew Brown, Julie Pace, Thomas Beaumont, Jennifer Agiesta and Matt Volz of The Associated Press; by Roger Runningen, Amanda J. Crawford, Mark Niquette and Jennifer Oldham of Bloomberg News; and by Tony Barboza and Michael Muskal of the Los Angeles Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/30/2012

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