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If you’ve been to Grand County lately, you’ve probably seen acre after acre of tinder-dry pine trees, reddish and dying in the thick forest after being attacked by bark beetles. That’s one reason why a small wildfire burning in the Sheep Mountain area—south of Granby, north of Winter Park, and near Fraser—is so disconcerting to firefighters.
“We have got a lot of dead trees up there,” John Bustos, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, tells 9News. “Those are a threat not only with a fire that could move through them, but you know our fire crews have to fight in those trees, and they could fall down at any time.”
There are no homes in the immediate area of the wildfire, which began yesterday and was estimated at 300 acres by nightfall. Firefighters from several local and federal agencies have not yet contained the blaze, reports Sky Hi Daily News, but three air tankers and two helicopters have been on the scene. Grand County is providing updates via gcemergency.com.
Meanwhile, construction companies are already estimating how much they might make in rebuilding the structures destroyed in last month’s Fourmile Fire, writes Boulder’s Daily Camera.