“In just 15 minutes, everything was on fire. And now snow is covering the ashes of a city that has been reduced to nothing. It’s surreal ”. Less than 24 hours following the departure of the Marshall fire, Cécile Givelet was struggling to recover from the shock, Friday December 31.
The most destructive fire in Colorado history
This Frenchwoman who lives in the area of Boulder, Colorado has watched helplessly the destruction of historic downtown Superior, a small town where she works as an assistant to a philanthropist. “There is only one big hole left in the place of houses, restaurants and shops. Everything has been razed “, recounted the young woman whose house in Louisville, another community ravaged by the flames, was fortunately spared.
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According to authorities, this fire, the most destructive that Colorado has ever known, may have reduced to ashes between 500 and 1,000 homes. A disaster that led to the evacuation of more than 30,000 people on Thursday and forced Democratic Governor Jared Polis to declare a state of emergency on Friday. Unheard of in the middle of winter in Colorado.
After being swept by violent gusts of wind, the Boulder area faced a snowstorm on Saturday January 1. The precipitation that had already started falling on Friday was both a blessing and a burden. “The snow is helping firefighters put out the fires. But people who lost their homes now find themselves on the streets, in the cold ”, remarked Cécile Givelet.
Warming pointed out
The blaze that broke out on Thursday was largely fed by strong winds of up to 160 km / h. But for Becky Bollinger, climatologist and researcher at the Climate Center at Colorado State University, “The meteorological factors (note: in recent days) do not explain by themselves”le Marshall Fire. “All the ingredients for the spread of a devastating forest fire had been in place since last spring which was very wet which helped to grow tall grass. Then we had a very dry summer and fall which helped to dry out those herbs and turn them into combustion material ”.
Like much of the American West, Colorado has experienced exceptional drought for several years, aggravated, according to climatologists, by global warming. “We must add to all this the fact that we are building more and more” in high fire risk areas, noted Cécile Givelet. “In Colorado, we believed for a long time that we would be relatively spared from the large-scale disasters facing our Californian neighbors, many of whom are moving to our state. Today, I tell myself that the same fate awaits us ”.
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