By REMA RAHMAN, Associated Press
CONIFER, Colo. (AP) — Mary Thuente says her neighbors got an automated call warning them to flee their home as a wildfire spread over the mountains southwest of Denver, but she never got one before she left.
Jack Ogg doesn't think he got a telephone warning either, though it's possible it may have come while he was outside rounding up his dogs and his neighbors' pets. After that, he rushed away with 15 people squeezed into his Jeep after firefighters asked him to take some neighbors with him.
Authorities said Thursday that an estimated 12 percent of people in the path of the wildfire, apparently sparked by a prescribed burn that flared up, never got a call to evacuate. Jefferson County sheriff's spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said a software glitch may have been to blame, though officials were still reviewing what went wrong.
But FirstCall Network Inc., which handles the county's system that automatically calls residents, said the system worked exactly as it should. The 12 percent represents residents who either had disconnected numbers or didn't answer, said Matthew Teague, president of the Baton Rouge, La., company.
"Reaching 88 percent of people in the middle of a weekday is a great percentage," he said.
Officials originally said about 900 residences received automated evacuation notices. Teague said it would take a few minutes to notify that many households.
A couple found dead in the burn area — Sam Lamar Lucas, 77, and Linda M. Lucas, 76, who was known by some of her friends as Moaneti Lucas — received an evacuation call, but it was not clear when, Kelley said. It was not yet known whether a woman from the fire area who's still missing received an evacuation notice.
One of the Lucases' neighbors, Eddie Schneider, said he didn't get a call and he knew the couple were packed to go if they received an order to evacuate. Schneider said he left after a firefighter warned him to leave.
The fire has damaged or destroyed about 25 homes and has blackened about 6 square miles in the mostly rural area southwest of Denver's populous suburbs. More than 500 firefighters were at the blaze Thursday, hoping to expand their containment line in case hot and windy weather returns this weekend as predicted.
Crews cleared lines on 45 percent of the fire's 8.5-mile perimeter and made enough progress to allow some residents to return home Thursday. Kelley said 180 homes were still evacuated.
Two planes that drop fire retardant were diverted to a fire in South Dakota, but four Black Hawk helicopters from the Colorado Air National Guard were still dropping water on the blaze.
Coe Meyer, who fled before getting a call to evacuate, viewed his burned home for the first time Thursday. He criticized the state for conducting a prescribed burn after such a dry March.
"The trappings of 62 years are gone," he said.
The controlled fire was meant to reduce vegetation that could fuel a devastating blaze around homes and watersheds.
Like several other residents, Meyer said he called the sheriff's office after seeing smoke near his home Monday but was told not to worry. The Colorado State Forest Service, which conducted last week's prescribed burn, said crews checking on the fire Monday afternoon reported no smoke, but when winds suddenly picked up, they saw embers blow across the containment lines into an unburned patch of land across a road.
While residents raised concerns about Jefferson County's phone notification system, Pueblo County emergency managers said they have used their system without major problems. Those instances, however, generally involve less than 100 calls, said Tim Nawrocki, communications manager for the county Office of Emergency Management.
"It does automatic redials for numbers that were busy or there was no pickup," he said.
Phone numbers for residents with land lines are placed into the system's database by the same company that provides the locations of people who make 911 calls, Nawrocki said. People who have only cellphones must go to a website to register their numbers.
System managers can determine what areas get the calls by mapping them on a computer screen or entering address parameters.
Reader Comments