ROXBOROUGH PARK, Colo. — Electrocuted birds sparked a brush fire that burned about 35 acres near a water treatment plant in the Roxborough Park area Tuesday, West Metro Fire Rescue said.
The vegetation and grass fire started Tuesday afternoon just east of Denver Water's treatment plant north of Roxborough State Park and east of the Roxborough Park neighborhood.
“When they arrived on scene, there was quite a plume of smoke that was coming up from the area behind the treatment plant," said Ronda Scholting, Public Information Officer for West Metro Fire. "The fire was relatively close to some buildings, but was actually moving away from them into an open area. Altogether the fire burned about 16 acres and no structures were damaged."
As of 6:30 p.m., fire crews had contained the fire and were mopping up.
West Metro Fire initially reported the fire was about 16 acres. After more accurate mapping, the size of the fire was estimated to be about 35 acres.
Just before 6 p.m., the sheriff's office issued a voluntary evacuation notice for Rampart Range Road and Roxborough Park Road in the area of the fire. That notice was lifted about a half hour later.
> Location of fire:
West Metro said Tuesday evening that the fire was caused by a group of birds that were electrocuted by power equipment, caught fire and then fell to the ground, igniting the dry grass below.
“It’s not a common cause of wildfires because really 90% of wildfires are human-caused," Scholting said. "So this is nature causing the fire. So it’s not as often that this happens as you might think. Obviously, there’s lots of birds, you see lots of birds on power lines, but it just happened in this case that a bird started the fire.”
A total of 43 firefighters responded to the fire, and a Douglas County helicopter crew made water drops over the fire.
Scholting said crews will keep an eye on the area overnight.
"We’re going to send our Station 15 crew out here at least once this evening just to kind of check on it," Scholting said. "Because while we’re confident that it is 100% contained, there still could be some smoldering areas that maybe we didn’t see that could maybe spark up a little bit, send up some smoke. And people should always know that on any wildland fire, always expect to see smoke potentially coming from within the perimeter of the fire because there are always pockets of small embers that may kick up just a little bit, especially if the wind gets going.”
This is at least the third time a bird hitting electrical equipment has sparked a fire in Colorado this year.
In July, a bird that caught fire after coming into contact with electrical equipment fell to the ground below and ignited nearby vegetation, sparking a fire that destroyed a home and burned more than 1,100 acres in Byers.
Earlier this month, a small brush fire in Jefferson County was started when a bird hit overhead power lines, according to West Metro Fire Rescue.
