July 11, 2005

Conspiracy theories

First, for the people who have asked where we are staying, here is a photo of the camp. . It's really not bad; the house is about 300 yards away. Our nearest neighbors are cows and burros.

Officially, the fire grew to 8,000 acres yesterday. I am getting informal reports that it is really at least 12,000 acres and the truth is being suppressed. I hope not--that is to say, I hope that we are just seeing information-lag and other snafus and not a deliberate policy.

While I was still at the house this morning, the tanker helicopter thundered over at low level about 8:30 a.m., headed south. For those of you who know the area, it was clearly flying towards Custer County Road 387 and the North Creek Road, which leads into Beulah. Beulah is in the cross-hairs today, but there is fear that an east "upslope" wind could push the fire back towards us along CR 387.

I could tell that we had a typical bi-level wind situation. At the camp, which is something over 8,000 feet elevation, there was a typical westerly breeze. Down at our house, which is at 6,600 feet, the breeze was picking up from the east. Composite radar seems to show most of the smoke in western Pueblo County, but I not trained in interpreting those images.

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