EL PASO COUNTY – Only on News 5, one man described what it was like to be in the path of a wildfire that sparked up Sunday afternoon near Highway 94 between Jimmy Camp Creek and the Aztec Family Raceway.
Ellicot, Falcon, and Cimarron Hills’ fire departments were among those who responded.
It was shortly before 3:30 p.m. on Sunday afternoon when Bill Carr drove up to his home along Highway 94, and immediately spotted trouble.
“Just pulled up by the house and then to the west of the neighbor’s property I saw what was kind of a small fire going and that’s when I got on the phone, called the fire department,” Carr said.
It turned out to be a ten to a 15-acre grass fire.
Carr’s home was right in its path, though it stopped short of it.
“Within 100 feet at the end,” he noted.
Firefighters had to face rugged terrain to contain it.
“This is a steep area with ravines and big flat areas like are down across the back side and its branches, it can snake up this way in a heartbeat,” he described.
“A lot of rocks and a few cliffs and stuff down in the bottom,” said Christy Malone with Ellicott Fire Protection District when she described the landscape firefighters had to deal with.
But they did just that, focusing on hot spots through the evening hours.
“They’re the greatest, they saved the day!” Carr cheered.
And in the end, the fire turned out to be a close call.
“Whew, it still gets the blood pressure up because it comes in fast,” he recalled.
“If I would’ve come home 15 minutes later, and the wind was really starting to come up then, it could’ve swept it.”
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
