Rocky Mountain National Park closes to visitors as fire spreads 6,000 acres an hour
No visitors are allowed in Rocky Mountain National Park as fire spreads 6,000 acres per hour in Colorado.
The park announced Thursday that it would be closed to all park visitors due to fire activity west of the Continental Divide.
“If conditions allow, an Infrared flight is planned to gauge where there is current fire activity,” the park wrote on Facebook. “This is a rapidly evolving situation.”
The air quality is hazardous within the park, and roads are blocked because trees have fallen, park officials said.
The East Troublesome fire had reached 125,602 acres and grew six times its size overnight, The Denver Post reported Thursday. It was burning about 6,000 acres per hour, CBS News reported.
Hundreds of people have been evacuated, and wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour spread the fire into Grand Lake, a town west of Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado Public Radio reported.
“Today’s mission is going to be on life safety,” incident commander Noel Livingston told Colorado Public Radio. “It’s going to be on evacuations and ensuring that people are out of the way of future fire growth.”
