Colorado
Colorado wildfire updates: Hundreds of homes evacuated after fire sparks near Jefferson County’s Deer Creek Canyon
Nearly 600 homes in Jefferson County were evacuated overnight Wednesday after a wildfire broke out near Deer Creek Canyon, sheriff’s officials said.
As of 1 a.m. Wednesday, the Quarry fire was burning on 100 acres of Jefferson County land just west of Grizzly Drive and still growing, according to the sheriff’s office. The cause of the fire remains unknown.
Evacuations started just before midnight Tuesday when sheriff’s officials announced mandatory evacuations for the Deer Creek Mesa, Sampson and Maxwell subdivisions southwest of Ken Caryl.
County officials said the fire was discovered by a sheriff’s deputy around 9 p.m. and was moving southeast.
By 1 a.m. Wednesday, 300 homes in the three subdivisions were being evacuated as deputies and firefighters knocked on doors and sent out emergency alerts, sheriff’s officials said.
As the fire continued to grow overnight, sheriff’s officials announced mandatory evacuations for another 275 homes in the McKinney and Murphy subdivisions.
Multiple agencies responded to the late-night blaze, including crews from West Metro Fire Rescue, South Metro Fire Rescue, Inter-Canyon Fire, the North Folk Fire Department and Jefferson County Open Space.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is vowing to process the backlog of sexual assault kits. The accumulation of the kits to preserve evidence of potential sexual assault is 517 days.
That is nearly six times the state’s goal of 90 days.
The head of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said lab analysts are so far behind that it will take two years and $2.5 million to catch up.
Chris Schaefer testified in front of the Joint Budget Committee at the state Capitol on Monday. He said that rape victims are waiting a year and a half for DNA to be processed.
He said the money will allow him to outsource rape kits to other laboratories and bring down the wait time to three months. He also vowed to increase transparency after a former CBI DNA analyst was criminally charged for mishandling or manipulating evidence. Yvonne “Missy” Woods faces over 100 separate charges related to over 1,000 cases she worked on.
“I want to see on our website a dashboard that has turnaround times for this so everybody sees how we are chipping away at that,” said Schaefer. “I agree the best thing to do is overdeliver.”
The state Legislature has set aside $3 million to re-test the DNA from those allegedly mishandled cases but district attorneys have only asked for 14 new tests. Schaefer wants to reallocate most of the money for rape kits.
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A spectator was killed after a hammer weight was thrown out of bounds at a high school track and field event on Sunday.
The event, a club track and field meet held at University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, was halted after a hammer thrown by a participant went past the barriers and struck a man in the stands. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a UCCS statement obtained by multiple outlets.
“We are heartbroken at this horrible accident and are focused on supporting all involved,” said UCCS chancellor Jennifer Sobanet said in the statement.
The meet was canceled after the accident, and participants were told to go home.
The hammer throw event uses a heavy hammer weight attached to a grip by a steel wire. Compared to discus, shotput and javelin, the hammer throw is a less common field event in the U.S. Some states, such as Ohio, have banned the sport from high schools altogether.
UCCS said that the victim’s identity would be released by the coroner’s office for El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs. The man was reportedly the parent of an athlete who attended a local high school, per local outlet KKTV, which cited a statement from the Colorado United Track Club.
The meet was part of a three-meet series held on UCCS’s campus, per the school.
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