Colorado Wildfire: Taste of Things to Come

Posted on Jun 29, 2012

USDAgov (CC BY 2.0)

The Waldo Canyon fire burns near the Air Force Academy on the outskirts of Colorado Springs.

The wildfire that raged through Colorado’s Waldo Canyon, just one of the many that lit up the state in recent weeks, consumed 346 homes and claimed at least one life. The event is consistent with predictions made by the world’s top climate scientists.

Scientists have long warned that the human activities that lead to climate change are responsible for the cotton-dry conditions in which the fire prevailed.

Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, a lead author of the United Nations’ climate science panel, said: “What we’re seeing is a window into what global warming really looks like. It looks like heat, it looks like fires, it looks like this kind of environmental disaster. … This provides vivid images of what we can expect to see more of in the future.”

—Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly

The Denver Post:

Colorado Springs Police Chief Pete Carey announced late Thursday that human remains had been found in a burned home in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood. A second person is missing, he said. He said the body was found in the rubble at 2910 Rossmere St. No further details were released.

Residents of three dozen streets in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood were summoned to a meeting Thursday night at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. There, they learned with certainty which of their homes had survived and which had fallen in the unprecedented firestorm Tuesday afternoon and evening.

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