Showing posts with label wildfire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wildfire. Show all posts

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Spring Creek Fire Ravages La Veta Pass and the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad

Photos: RGSR
Since 2006, the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad has been taking passengers from Alamosa over La Veta Pass to the town of La Veta and back. Over the last dozen years, the railroad has developed trips and events hosted at its exclusive, off-the-grid facilities at Fir. Many non-railfan patrons have repeated trips to events like Rails and Ales and concerts by regionally and nationally known music artists have become a regular feature of summers in the San Luis Valley.

Such endeavors have become a source of revenue for Alamosa and pumped resources into the entire valley. But the passenger business is just a part of what the railroad has done for the people in this isolated region. The freight side of this short line, the San Luis & Rio Grande Railroad, has kept the valley supplied with all its vast needs. It has taken the valley's products from potatoes and produce to perlite and sugar and kept the transportation costs low enough to keep the valley competitive.

All that came to a crashing halt last week when a wildfire was deliberately set by an arsonist.

The Spring Creek Fire started June 27 and in only a week has already grown to become one of the three largest wildfires in Colorado's history. If conditions persist, it could easily exceed the largest ever. Low snowpack, inaccessible and rough terrain, and few water resources all combine to make this fire relatively difficult to fight. Residents in the area are struggling to get a handle on the destruction. They're not alone.

The railroad is already aware of several damaged structures that make service to and from the San Luis Valley impossible. In particular, a bridge located near Sierra burned and that alone has severed the link between the SLV and Walsenburg and the outside world.



Matthew Abbey, Corporate Director Passenger and Freight Development at Iowa Pacific Holdings, LLC, the parent company of the San Luis & Rio Grande, says, "The bridge at Sierra will be replaced with culverts and may be open by Friday." Restoring the link to the mountain and the outside world is essential. Once the link is complete, "we will then sprint to catch up the freight service; 400 jobs around the community rely on our rail connection."

Even with the bridge out, the railroad has already been working with firefighters to get water to the remote locations of the fire. "Our railroad is filling tanker cars with water and delivering them to the edge of the fire zone. We are delivering about 125,000 gallons per day on our nickel. They can fill four tanker trucks at a time. It’s amazing," Abbey said.

Nonetheless, all the water they can muster can't save structures that have already burned. The railroad's facility at Fir, near the summit of La Veta Pass, site of the many memorable concerts and events through the years, has not escaped the fire's fury.


"The stage is gone. Utterly gone, with everything in it including all [the] back line, the solar and wind controllers, camp chairs, generators." Abbey said, "Its just all gone."

Chief among the losses is the concert facility's green room, an old theatrical term for the place where visiting performers wait before going on stage. It served as a sort of yearbook for the venue. The autographs, what Abbey called "the doodles ...artist graffiti," irreplaceable mementos of performances throughout the years are now lost forever.

Thankfully, the rest of the facilities at Fir are relatively untouched by the fire. "The remainder of the site is basically untouched. Needs a wash and it's ready for service." Because of its remote location, the concert facilities are off-the-grid and entirely self contained. "We have 15,000 gallons of water up there plus some pumps, so washing will commence when the evacuation order is lifted."

Despite the catastrophic loss of the stage, plans are already underway to resume the summer concerts. Though, without a proper stage in place, some compromises will be necessary. The brick dance floor will serve as the stage in the short term, Abbey said. "We will build, rent, borrow, or acquire a canopy for the dance floor so that the artists are covered. At this time, we expect that the next scheduled concert, Peter Yarrow [of Peter, Paul and Mary], will proceed as scheduled."

People who want to help do have a means to get involved. According to Abbey, a GoFundMe campaign is underway for Fir. "As pretty much everyone knows, we are a hard-working and dirt-poor railroad. So help is needed if we are to have anything after this season. It’s that simple."

A quick check of the crowd funding site showed that after 3 days, they had already raised $4,615, or 1.8% of their $250,000 goal. While resumption of the concerts is important, Abbey still believes resumption of rail service and those 400 jobs are the most important. "If we fail to re-establish this critical piece of infrastructure, we will make do for the last few shows and call it a wrap." ⚒


For hundreds of Spring Creek fire evacuees, “There’s been a lot of heartache”, Denver Post July 4, 2018.

Friday, June 8, 2018

Wildfire Halts Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad Operations

The 2018 summer season has got off to a rocky start for the premier heritage railroad in Colorado. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad based in Durango, Colorado has halted all passenger operations due to the 416 Fire, a wildfire of still-undetermined origin that started at 10:02 AM Friday, exactly one week ago. Roughly 1,500 people have evacuated for the 5,000 acre fire near Hermosa, Colorado, with approximately 600 firefighters combating the flames.



At present, the railroad has temporarily halted all operations with exception of free museum and railyard tours in Durango until at least June 17th. They have furloughed 150 employees as a result, leaving as many as 3 trains worth of passengers without a trip to take to Silverton.

If Durango is hard hit by the suspension of service, Silverton is likely desperate. The noontime crush of tourists is something most restaurants and retailers in the small San Juan county seat absolutely depend on to make or break their season. All but 62 of San Juan County's 699 residents live in Silverton, meaning Colorado's smallest county by population is not a likely candidate for growth this year, thanks to the fire.



When operations do resume, it's more than likely that the narrow gauge steam mikados will not immediately return to service. The sentiment is that with one wildfire already active and consuming resources, stray cinders from the coal-fired locomotives run the risk of igniting a second wildfire, even with the precautions of fire-suppression equipped speeders and a stand-by helicopter. Instead, and a result of the impact of the 2002 Missionary Ridge Fire, the D&SNG is planning to use diesel engines to haul what trains it can. It's not ideal, and the D&SNG knows that the stars are its legacy Denver & Rio Grande Western K-28 and K-36 class engines burning coal as they always have. It just may not be for June 2018. ⚒



Friday, June 21, 2013

West Fork Fire Takes Aim As South Fork Evacuates

West Fork fire Tuesday evening in terrain
and fuel that's a firefighter's nightmare.
Photo: inciweb.org
The town of South Fork, Colorado, is in significant danger of being lost to the West Fork Complex fire. Today at 6:00 AM, all residents of South Fork were ordered by authorities to evacuate.

Inciweb.org reports:
The West Fork Complex consists of two wildfires, West Fork and Windy Pass, that are burning on the San Juan and Rio Grande National Forests in southwest Colorado. Both fires are burning in steep, rugged terrain with large amounts of beetle-killed spruce which makes it difficult and unsafe for firefighters to mount a direct attack. 
... 
Eric Norton, Fire Behavior Analyst for the NIMO Team, said “The fire behavior we saw yesterday was so extreme, it was undocumented and unprecedented”. 
.... 
The fire made a 7 mile run to the northeast crossing the Continental Divide and burning on the ridge above Big Meadows Reservoir down to Metroz Lake. ... In some locations the fire is only 1/2 mile from Highway 160. The town of South Fork was evacuated at 0600 this morning. Structure protection is being done in South Fork and all additional resources have been sent there. Total acreage for the West Fork Complex is 29,900 acres.
History and rolling stock mean very little compared to the worth of a human life and the homes already lost this year. Still, it should be noted that standard gauge equipment has historically been stored there at the junction of the San Luis & Rio Grande and the short line San Luis Central, and there is no current means for the average blogger to identify whose rail property is currently at risk. Also worth pointing out, the long-suffering Denver & Rio Grande Railroad is based in South Fork. Once the evacuation order has been lifted, it will depend on what damage exists before they resume operations.

This West Fork Complex fire is one of several active fires now burning in Colorado. The following map, put together by 9News.com, the Denver NBC affiliate, shows all of the identified fire locations.


View Colorado Wildfires June, 2013 in a larger map

God help us. Please.◊

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Royal Gorge Fire Claims Narrow Gauge Caboose

Editor's Note: Normally, I would add more details on the previous post in the comments, but this warrants it's own article.

Fox21 image showing space behind
499's tender where caboose 0584 sat
In my smoke-clouded mind, I had forgotten about a detail in the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park until I had hit the publish button. I waited on bringing it up because I hoped the fire had missed it (making it a non-issue). Well, not entirely.

Nathan Holmes of www.DRGW.net reports that the wildfire totally destroyed caboose 0584, part of a display of Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge equipment in the parking lot. Visit the DRGW.net site for the full story (click here to search his site for the story if the other link fails).

In related news, the Royal Gorge Route commented on Colorado Railroads' Facebook page that they've resumed operations, saying "we're back on track!" Great to hear they're back in business in the same week.◊

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Royal Gorge Fire Burns Facilities Around Famed Bridge

Both ends of the Royal Gorge Bridge park engulfed in smoke as structures burn.
Image: Canon City Daily Record
The Royal Gorge fire burns near Canon City. Some tourist structures within Royal Gorge Bridge park have burned, but the bridge remains intact as of late Tuesday. The miniature railroad that runs inside the park appears to have suffered some damage. No deaths or serious injuries have been reported.

There is no word at this time regarding the status or operations of the Royal Gorge Route railroad Tuesday or what is planned for Wednesday. The railroad has operated for nearly 15 years carrying passengers from Canon City to Parkdale, Colorado along the bottom of the Royal Gorge next to the Arkansas River, ever since the Union Pacific shuttered the Tennessee Pass route between Pueblo and Dotsero. The tracks are located on the north side of the canyon, across the river from where the fire started. Given the depth of the gorge and the steepness of the walls, combustible trees and other vegetation are more sparse than above, but could still cause damage to the rails. It's assumed that until the fire is controlled and contained, the railroad will likely not be allowed to run any trains through the gorge.

Another fire burning north of Colorado Springs ignited almost the same time Tuesday afternoon as the Royal Gorge fire. The Black Forest fire has claimed many homes and displaced hundreds of families with mandatory evacuations. The fire is also uncontrolled and 0% contained. Prevailing winds pushing it east in the direction of the former Chicago Rock Island & Pacific town of Peyton.◊

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Rio Grande Scenic Renders Help To Flying W Wranglers

Rio Grande Scenic Railroad is offering relief for the recently displaced Flying W Wranglers. They lost their bread-and-butter when the Flying W Ranch and their chuckwagon supper facilities burnt to the ground in the Waldo Canyon Fire. From the Rio Grande Scenic Railroad site,

Thursday, June 28, 2012

BNSF To Protect Joint Line With Fire Train

According to Trains Magazine's News Wire, BNSF is sending a "fire train" to assist with protecting sections of the Joint Line threatened by the Waldo Canyon fire, which is currently threatening several communities, most notably Colorado Springs. The sections of the Joint Line under threat are actually owned by Union Pacific, which inherited the originally narrow-gauge main line of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad in the UP-SP merger September 11, 1996. Despite this, BNSF's trackage rights go back to the USRA and World War I, and keeping the line in service is paramount to keep Powder River and Yampa coal flowing south to Texas.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Manitou Springs Evacuation Ordered

Guests at the historic Cliff House in Manitou Springs were turned out of their beds in the early hours of the morning to news of evacuation orders. Manitou is the home of the Cog Wheel Route, the Manitou & Pikes Peak Railway, along with many unmarked and marked artifacts of the Rio Grande and the Colorado Midland Railroads as well as it's successor, the Midland Terminal Railway that have survived up to now. Hopefully, the evacuations are just a precaution. The test will come later this morning when the winds pick up. If the worst happens, it wouldn't be a tragedy to lose artifacts or equipment. The real tragedy would be if human lives are lost. People are irreplaceable.

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Gorge Train Continues Self-Imposed Suspension of Operations

As of 6:00 PM yesterday, the Parkdale Canyon fire is considered 100% contained, although smoldering fires and underground hot spots still remain. Instead of resuming train operations this morning as anticipated, the Royal Gorge Route railroad has voluntarily continued its self-imposed moratorium until the owners are sure that the route is safe to continue without risking a repeat of Monday. In a statement released today, owner Mark Greska, said,

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Fires Cripple Two of Colorado's Scenic Railroads

Fires in two separate locations are causing major disruptions during the summer. The Royal Gorge Route has canceled trains due to a wildfire in Parkdale. More significant is the disruption caused by a fire at Lobato for the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic.