Colorado forest fires

Hello Sibrobians!

Lynda Love of Denver, Colorado here. Sorry to be so late in posting this, as 
I have heard from some of you privately. Here's the newsflash:  Denver is not 
about to go up in flames, despite what the national media say! MSMBC's web 
page headline "DEFENDING DENVER" was a bit overkill. The forest fire is a 
*long* way from the city. If they wanted to headline the article 'Defending 
Denver's Water Supply', that would have been different-- and would have told 
more of the story.

The forest fire was started by an illegal campfire on national forest land 
last weekend (June 8). It was very hot and windy and the small fire quickly 
grew to a 50,000 acre inferno over the next 24 hours. The wind was blowing 
from the southwest, spreading the fire to the northwest and blowing the plume 
of smoke over the Denver metro area last Sunday, June 9th. There was a layer 
of soot and ash over my iris blooms. We had to close up the house to keep the 
heavy smoke out. The sky was orange and there were ashes of pine needles 
falling. We have no air conditioning, so couldn't open the house in the 
evening as we usually do and we had a rough night sleeping in the heat. 
Overnight, the wind direction changed to come out of the northeast and the 
air temperature cooled down. At 5am I woke up and opened up the house. Since 
then, the fire had burned over 100,000 acres and has been spreading to the 
south because the wind has been out of the north all week, keeping us out of 
the smoke. The fire has burned a huge footprint in the national forest, 
larger than the size of the city and county of Denver. I hope they find the 
*idiot* who started this whole thing.

One problem that will have to be dealt with in the future is that the fire 
burned all the way around Cheesman reservoir, which supplies 60% of Denver's 
drinking water. If it rains hard later this summer when the monsoon usually 
comes, the ash will run into the water and clog treatment facilities. If 
there's floods on the hillsides above the reservior, trees and other debris 
will wash into the reservior creating an even worse problem. 

The fire is currently burning about 25 miles southwest of Denver and 
continues to threaten mountain subdivisions, including the home of Glenna 
Chapman, whose garden was on tour at the 1998 convention. Glenna has been on 
standby evacuation since last Sunday. If the wind switches direction and the 
fire starts spreading to the north and east again, her area could become part 
of the manditory evacuations. The wind is forecast to shift this week, but 
firefighters have been working on the north and east of the fire so 
*hopefully* Glenna's subdivision will be saved. As of this writing, the fire 
is about 7 miles west of Glenna's home.

This doesn't have much to do with Siberian irises, except to say that I had 
been planning to take pictures of my Siberians last Sunday, except the smoke 
stopped that. Additionally, irises of any type don't look too good with a 
layer of ash over them. Also, my mom and I drove down to the Colorado Springs 
iris show last Sunday morning, with Siberian stalks safely stowed in the 
back. We could see the smoke from the fire from I-25 as we drove down. On the 
way back in the early afternoon, we could see the smoke (and hence the 
situation) had gotten *much* worse. Then we drove into the smoke plume....

Incidentally, I was very picky about which Siberian stalks to take to the 
show. Picky enough to get blue ribbons on them and win the silver medal. :-) 

Those of you who have excess rain, please send it our way.

Lynda

Lynda D. Love 
Rxiris@aol.com
Denver, Colorado, USA 
Zone 5, 5400 feet elevation on the high *dry* plains

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