July 1, 2013 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildfire
Federal fire managers ordered safety stand-downs Monday morning and gave hundreds of wildland firefighters the option of packing up and going home after 19 elite crew members were killed in Arizona.
“The immediate impact of that fire is on re-focusing everybody throughout the fire community on safety,” said National Interagency Fire Center spokesman Randy Eardley. “They will talk about it, reflect on it and refocus their efforts on safety.”
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June 22, 2013 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildfire
SOUTH FORK — Wildfires spread to an estimated 66,200 acres Saturday in spruce-beetle-ravaged forests, continuing to imperil tourist towns on the west edge of Colorado’s San Luis Valley.
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June 1, 2013 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildfire
JAMESTOWN — A team combining ecological know-how with hotshot firefighting is being deployed in Front Range forests to try to address Colorado’s wildfire predicament: needing the purge of fire but not wanting it.
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May 14, 2013 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildfire
An unprecedented post-Thanksgiving wildfire that burned through snow, frustrating firefighters as ponds froze and ice coated helicopters, has revitalized forests and meadows in Rocky Mountain National Park.
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January 8, 2013 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildfire
PINEWOOD LAKE — A federal forester flicked a Bic, igniting a first bone-dry pile of culled young pines — testing conditions for the looming task of torching 180,000 similar piles across Colorado.
The continued construction of houses in burn zones is forcing this effort to thin overly dense forests and reduce the risk of super-intense wildfires.
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December 8, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water, Wildfire
BUCKEYE — The scorching of Colorado forests by super-intense wildfires is worsening the water woes for Eldon Ackerman and other Larimer County farmers, jeopardizing thousands of irrigated acres that normally produce millions of dollars in crops.
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June 17, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Pollution, Water, Wildfire, Wildlife
The hundreds of thousands of gallons of red slurry that air tankers are dropping on Colorado forests to shield mountain houses from wildfires has a downside: It is toxic. Laced with ammonia and nitrates, it has the potential to kill fish and taint water supplies.
Federal authorities say they’re implementing new rules prohibiting application of fire-retardant chemicals within 600 feet of waterways. Air tanker pilots and crew commanders now are required to carry maps that identify sensitive terrain — such as areas where greenback cutthroat trout and Pawnee montane skipper butterflies are monitored as sentinel species.
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June 7, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Wildfire
A decade-long move toward prescribed fires and forest-thinning has not reduced the risk of catastrophic wildfires along the Front Range, federal and state authorities say.
And firefighting commanders increasingly favor letting more forests burn — if people aren’t threatened — instead of mounting all-out assaults. They say it’s smarter to let some fires burn naturally because this can help prevent huge fires that ruin forest seed stocks and watersheds.
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April 13, 2012 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Environment, Water, Wildfire
WESTCREEK — Pushing to accelerate nature’s healing, the U.S. Forest Service is deploying contract labor crews who this week began planting 146,000 more pine and fir trees — an effort to stabilize wildfire-ravaged mountainsides that slump into metro Denver water supplies.
But every new catastrophic wildfire adds to the blackened-dead acreage west of Colorado’s Front Range cities. And water providers face increasing costs — which are passed to residents in monthly water bills — as more eroding sediment descends across burned watershed and clogs reservoirs.
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
