{"id":73263,"date":"2016-07-15T18:06:02","date_gmt":"2016-07-16T00:06:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/red-flag-warning-issued-black-ridge-fire-slows\/"},"modified":"2016-07-16T00:06:02","modified_gmt":"2016-07-16T00:06:02","slug":"red-flag-warning-issued-black-ridge-fire-slows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/red-flag-warning-issued-black-ridge-fire-slows\/","title":{"rendered":"Red flag warning issued; Black Ridge Fire slows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=a85a6b9c-9165-4d6a-80c3-dc0c4cf04207&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1928\" height=\"1163\" alt=\"Air support from the U.S. Forest Service Durango Tanker Base makes a slurry drop Wednesday on the south side of the Black Ridge Fire. The fire was 80 percent contained by Friday evening.\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Air support from the U.S. Forest Service Durango Tanker Base makes a slurry drop Wednesday on the south side of the Black Ridge Fire. The fire was 80 percent contained by Friday evening.<\/span><span class=\"credit\">Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>As of Friday evening, the Black Ridge Fire was 80 percent contained, but no personnel had been released as crews face critical fire weather conditions Saturday, officials said.<\/p>\n<p>The National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning for most of western Colorado for Saturday, including Durango \u2013 where Saturday\u2019s forecast calls for a high temperature of 87 degrees and wind gusts up to 35 mph.<\/p>\n<p>A red flag warning means that fires could spread quickly because of low humidity, high temperatures and strong winds.<\/p>\n<p>There is an ongoing burn ban in southern La Plata County \u2013 south of U.S. Highway 160 \u2013 and whenever a red flag warning is issued, the Durango Fire Protection District puts a burn ban in place.<\/p>\n<p>One helicopter is assigned to the fire, and it made several bucket drops Friday, Megan Graham, La Plata County spokeswoman and public information officer for the fire, said in a news release.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe crews were helped a lot by the humidity recovery last (Thursday) night,\u201d Graham said.<\/p>\n<p>Pre-evacuation orders for nearby residents were lifted Thursday evening, and Graham said Friday evening that \u201coil and gas operations in the area have returned to normal.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There were about 70 firefighters on the fire, and plans were underway to reduce the number of crews when it is possible.<\/p>\n<p>With critical fire conditions forecast through the weekend and dry thunderstorms expected Sunday and Monday, initial fire-attack resources are prepared to handle any new fires, Graham said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>80% contained Friday, but red flag warning  Saturday<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73264,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-73263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73263"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=73263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}