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<br />from the fire meteorologists is pretty darn good, but we can't count on it always being 100%, so
<br />the moisture and rain that is predicted for coming down the Front Range here is great, we're
<br />hoping for that, it will be useful to the frreflghting effort in the sense that it will change the
<br />behavior ofthe frre, It will be a pain in the rear end for the firefighters who still are going to have
<br />to be out there, they will have to work wet and cold to continue to build containment lines around
<br />the fire, So it's got its pluses and minuses, The challenge from a public and frreflghter's safety,
<br />particularly on the Schoonover fire, is that as the temperatures go up and you're working all day,
<br />12 hours shifts, you become more susceptible to hypothermia and things like that, Plus, you've got
<br />to have facilities out of the way to rest all the frreflghters off shift,
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<br />At the bottom of the page, there's a website, that website is the Regional Coordination Center
<br />website where, through it, you can get all the information that's on here, That website, I only put
<br />one website on there because you don't need any more information than that. On that website are
<br />links to the Colorado State Forest Service, where you can get other information about fire
<br />prevention/preparedness, leads to the National Weather Service, links to the frre wamings and
<br />watches, links to OEM for frre restrictions, so that one web site, if you can't remember anything
<br />else, go to that and get to all the other frre information websites, The current situation with the
<br />Schoonover Fire, is that the crews have made good progress today, driving down the interstate
<br />today I noticed that the predictions of the wind shift are true, at least between here and Ft. Collins,
<br />is that we traditionally have an easterly wind upslope right now, Yesterday, the weather
<br />predictions were westerly winds, although on the frre they were mainly from the Southwest, and
<br />that pushed the frre to the Northeast. So crews worked during the night to build containment lines
<br />along the northwest side of the fire, anticipating the wind shift, so when the wind s start coming
<br />out of the east, the fire won't spread to the west. There are evacuations currently in place,
<br />structures lost on that frre - 4 residences, 8 outbuildings, one bridge and one cabin, The four
<br />residences mayor may not be primary residences, we don't have. , ,we haven't had time to
<br />determine that. And some of those are on Forest Service land, as the long-term lease cabins, So
<br />of the acreage, the frre size, it changes daily, Sometimes it goes up, sometimes it goes down, that
<br />all depends on the time we have to make estimates., ,a lot of the acreage this year that's high, is
<br />popular estimates, and as we get better equipment in there and get GPS the acreage becomes more
<br />fine tuned, Right now the acreage, as you probably heard on the media, is about 4,000 acres, That
<br />will change as we get better information, We have an infrared flight flown last night to pick up
<br />the fire perimeter, through infrared sensing, and right now we're estimating out of that 4,000
<br />approximately 410 acres are on non- federal ground, Besides the values of the houses within the
<br />fire perimeter, there is also a concern on the watershed along the South Platte, This frre has run
<br />from about the base of Cheeseman Reservoir down to the north east paralleling down the South
<br />Platte River, From there, it runs into Strontia Springs, which is a reservoir that had major
<br />secondary impacts after the Buffalo Creek Fire, We will be doing assessments on the severity of
<br />the fire, the impact on the ground, the type of _? _ soils, loss of canopy, loss of groundcover, as
<br />the fire is got in full control, and we have assessment teams go on in, The concern is, if there's
<br />been enough vegetation removed by frre from that area, and we get some secondary precipitation
<br />events that are strong enough, its going to wash a lot of material into the South Platte which will
<br />go downstream into Strontia Springs again, Questions?
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<br />Matt(?) - One of the things I might like to add, first of all, I'd really like to thank Rich Homann,
<br />Rich is in contact with our office, literally, about every 4 -5 hours from 8 o'clock in the morning
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