“Once the fire front went past, we were able to take on the hot spots and secure the area,” he said. The fire raced toward the fort, where a group of a dozen firefighters sprayed it with water hoses for 30 minutes until the winds died down, Davidson, the fire chief, said. “They couldn’t get in there because they could get stuck. “That’s what made it very hard for the firefighters to fight,” Lafever said. Shortly after they left, flames jumped over a wetland area along the Arkansas River, which runs through the middle of the park. Firefighters saved the structure from a fast-moving wildfire on April 12, 2022. Courtesy of Bent's Old Fort National Historic Site Another angle of the burn scar near the fort. The group included several horses, donkeys, cats, peacocks and goats.īut staff had to leave a lone ox named Clark outside in order to evacuate the property themselves. When she saw smoke, Lafever and other park staff corralled a herd of animals that live on the park grounds inside the fort walls, Lafever said. “It just took off in minutes,” said Alicia Lafever, communications manager for the fort. on Tuesday near the eastern edge of the 800-acre park, smoldering for several hours before the wind picked up around 8 p.m. ![]() ![]() ![]() “It has a lot of history and it’s a landmark.” “I told them to do whatever it took to protect that fort,” Davidson said. Firefighters battled the blaze for around 30 minutes to keep it from igniting the wooden beams that support the two-story adobe structure, said Brad Davidson, the city’s fire chief. A fast-moving wildfire nearly destroyed the Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site in southeast Colorado Tuesday night.įlames from the Bent’s Fort Fire, one of several fires currently burning in the region amid dry and windy weather, got within a few feet of the walls of the fort in La Junta.
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