Update: As of 6:10 p.m. on Saturday, July 13, 2024, the Dinosaur Fire is 100% contained.
Details were updated at 9:00 p.m. on July 12, 2024.
A fire is burning across the base of Green Mountain, just west of the City of Boulder. Officials are calling it the Dinosaur Fire, which started near the Mallory Cave Trail, a quarter-mile west of the National Center for Atmospheric Research building.
Read: Boulder’s Dinosaur Fire tested firefighting readiness for ‘long, hot summer’
The first call about the fire came in around 11:20 a.m., and officials identified the blaze as “slow-moving” by about 12:30 p.m. Roughly three-and-a-half acres had burned as of late Friday afternoon, with winds blowing at about six miles per hour and gusts up to 20 mph.
Officials reported no need for evacuations and no injuries, with little concern about encroachment on homes. Two helicopters were working with ground crews to contain the fire. At least eight different fire districts responded. Because of the excessive heat, crews battling the fire were rotating in and out. Firefighters continued to work overnight.
“We don’t have a ton of concern for public safety at this time,” Jennifer Ciplet, public information officer with the City of Boulder, told Boulder Reporting Lab on Friday afternoon. Still, officials were urging nearby residents to have a go-bag ready in case conditions change.
They asked people to steer clear of the NCAR area. The cause remains unknown, Ciplet said.
The slow burn contrasted with the conditions that caused the fire to ignite. A remote automated weather station on Shanahan Ridge recorded relative humidity dropping toward zero as the temperature climbed to nearly 100 degrees at the time of ignition. Such low humidity is not new. This year’s May and June stretch was one of Boulder’s driest on record, and just yesterday, the U.S. Drought Monitor placed sections of Boulder County in the severe drought category.
Though no evacuations were enacted other than for the staff of NCAR, it’s only been a little over two years since another fire burned in the same area and forced thousands to flee. In March 2022, months after the Marshall Fire burned more than a thousand homes, some 19,000 people were evacuated as a blaze covered nearly 200 acres south of the NCAR building. That evacuation’s congestion prompted calls for emergency officials to rethink how to get thousands of residents out of harm’s way faster. Unlike during the Marshall Fire, low winds during the NCAR fire allowed firefighting aircraft to respond by dropping retardant to keep the fire boxed in.
Ciplet said the Dinosaur Fire is “not the same kind of fire” as the NCAR fire in 2022. Even though it’s extremely hot, she said, the way the weather is interacting with the fire is “not causing any concern.”
It’s likely a swift response also aided containment. Fire departments across Boulder County recently agreed to follow a new indices-based response, where a set of factors — like wind speeds, humidity and drought levels — determine how many resources respond to a fire. The higher the risk, the more engines respond.
“If it’s hot, dry and windy, we’re sending a whole bunch of stuff,” Brian Oliver, the City of Boulder’s wildland chief, previously told Boulder Reporting Lab. “We’re going to stack the boxes as thick as we can to stop that ignition from spreading.”
Because of the smoke from the Dinosaur Fire, the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment issued an air quality health advisory through 9 a.m. on July 13.
On July 9, Boulder County and the city launched a new messaging system to inform the community during disasters. This system is being put to use during the Dinosaur Fire. To receive these texts, text BOCOinfo to 888777.
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