Deadly Colorado blaze subsides with help from rain

Rain and calmer winds helped firefighters tame a deadly wildfire ranked as Colorado's most destructive on record as authorities reported making significant headway on Friday in curtailing a blaze that has destroyed nearly 420 homes outside Colorado Springs.

The fire has charred roughly 24 square miles (6,215 hectares) of rolling, wooded terrain northeast of Colorado's second-largest city since it started on Tuesday, killing two people and forcing some 38,000 to flee their homes.

A firefighting force estimated to include some 800 personnel - along with air tankers and water-dropping helicopters - had carved containment lines around 30 percent of the blaze's perimeter, up from 5 percent on Thursday.

Fire managers expect it will take nearly another week to fully corral the blaze, but the outlook improved as rain showers moved into the area at midday following an encouraging night on the fire lines that El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa called a "turning point."

Overcast skies, cooler temperatures and the absence of strong, erratic winds that stoked the blaze during its first three days also were cited as factors in the subsiding fire.

"We had a real good day without wind," Maketa told a news conference as he announced that some evacuated areas were being reopened to residents.

"The rain made a tremendous impact. If you look at it as a fight, we got our tails kicked for a couple of days ... and I think today we delivered some blows."

While officials cautioned that conditions could change again for the worse, Rich Harvey of the US Forest Service said there was "no significant progress by the fire in any direction today."

Aerial photos of devastated areas showed large swaths of obliterated neighborhoods with bare, blackened trees and houses reduced to cinders and rubble.

Governor John Hickenlooper said after touring the fire zone on Friday that he was struck by the "the randomness" of the destruction.

"There are places where few trees were left alone and the homes were burned to the ground. And then areas where the trees burned and the houses were fine," he said.

The bulk of the destroyed homes were lost in the first 24 hours of the fire, Maketa said. The remains of two people killed on Tuesday night, in the midst of an evacuation attempt as flames closed in, were pulled from the wreckage of their garage on Thursday.

Evacuation orders lifted

But the news was notably more upbeat a day later. Firefighters with bulldozers managed to clear a buffer between the western edge of the blaze and the city limits of Colorado Springs.

Officials also lifted evacuation orders for the northern tip of the city, comprising more than 1,000 homes, along with some adjacent communities on its outskirts where some 4,000 to 5,000 people had been forced to flee.

Maketa said an investigation into the two fire-related deaths as possible homicides did not necessarily mean authorities suspect arson, although officials said the cause appears to be of human origin.

"When I say, 'homicide investigation,' it's because we have two deceased people (and) that means we investigate it as a crime until we prove otherwise," he said.

Although no additional structures burned overnight, the running tally of confirmed losses climbed by nearly 60 homes on Friday. By Friday evening an El Paso County Sheriff's Office website said 419 homes had been destroyed with another 15 damaged.

That figure surpasses the previous record of 346 dwellings destroyed last year on the northwestern fringe of Colorado Springs by the so-called Waldo Canyon fire, then deemed the most destructive blaze in state history.

Catastrophe modeling company AIR Worldwide, whose software is used by the insurance industry to predict losses, said the houses within the fire's perimeter had a total value of about $500 million.

Ultimate losses could be less than that, depending on how badly damaged the houses were.

The estimated cost of fighting the fire through Thursday was put at $2 million, Harvey said.

The Black Forest blaze, named for the community near where it started, was the largest of several burning across Colorado this week and has underscored concerns that prolonged drought conditions could intensify this year's fire season in the western United States.