Apparently the emergency was caused by the fall of electric poles on an arid soil.
At least two people remain missing following the devastating fires that struck several cities in the state of Colorado, in the central United States, destroying hundreds of homes, local authorities said Saturday.
“We believe we have two missing persons and we are investigating”Boulder County Emergency Management Office spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill told AFP, clarifying that she has no further information on these individuals.
So far no deaths from the fires have been reported.
Boulder Sheriff Joe Pelle said Friday that it is a “miracle” that there were not many casualties, given the force of the incident and the rapid spread of the flames.
At least 500 houses, possibly many more, were destroyed by the flames that hit the town of Superior on Thursday, located on the outskirts of the city of Denver, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate the area untimely.
The damage is enormous: in the aerial images you can see entire streets reduced to smoking ashes. Apparently the fire was caused by the fall of electric poles on arid soil and the flames were fueled by gusts of wind of up to 160 kilometers per hour.
“The families had just a few minutes to put everything they might – the animals, their children – in the car and leave,” Gov. Jared Polis said at a press conference last Friday.
In a call to Polis, the American president Joe Biden promised that “every effort will be made to provide immediate assistance to affected people and populations.”, according to the White House. Biden declared that a major catastrophe affects Colorado and ordered the transfer of federal aid to the state.
Snowfall on Friday slowed the spread of the fire
In recent years, the west of the country has seen unprecedented fires, especially in California and Oregon.
For Daniel Swain, a meteorologist at the University of UCLA, “it’s hard to believe” that these fires occurred in December. “But take a fall of record heat and drought, with only an inch of snow so far this season, and add a storm with extreme gusts (…) and the result will be extremely dangerous fires that move very fast,” the investigator tweeted ahead of Friday’s snowfall.
But beyond the fires The United States has recently suffered other extreme events, such as the passage of Storm Ida in New York and New Jersey in September. and deadly tornadoes in December in Kentucky. At the moment it is unknown if these facts are linked to global warming as some environmental organizations maintain.
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