{"id":99224,"date":"2018-06-12T16:00:38","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T22:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cigarette-starts-fire-on-florida-road\/"},"modified":"2018-06-12T16:00:38","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T22:00:38","slug":"cigarette-starts-fire-on-florida-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cigarette-starts-fire-on-florida-road\/","title":{"rendered":"Cigarette starts fire on Florida Road"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Quick action by firefighters early Monday morning stopped a potentially catastrophic human-caused fire on Florida Road (County Road 240).<\/p>\n

Upper Pine River Fire Protection District Chief Bruce Evans said a fire was reported around 4 a.m. at the entrance of the El Gato subdivision, about 13 miles northeast of Durango and across from the Los Ranchitos neighborhood.<\/p>\n

On the way to the scene, firefighters noticed a man with a backpack and his dog walking on the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey thought it was unusual someone was out on the road at 4 o\u2019clock in the morning,\u201d Evans said.<\/p>\n

Because the fire was reported early and crews were able to get to the scene quickly, the fire was contained to an approximate 60-by-40 foot area.<\/p>\n

Evans said if the fire had spread and jumped the road, hundreds of homes could have been threatened.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad it been 3 o\u2019clock in the afternoon with some wind like yesterday (Sunday), it would have taken off,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re already stretched so thin (with the 416 and Burro fires), it wouldn\u2019t have been easy to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n

As crews were surveying the site of the fire, they found what looked like a makeshift campsite on the right side of Florida Road with numerous cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey.<\/p>\n

Evans said the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office questioned the man who was on the road. Evans was not sure if the man had been ticketed.<\/p>\n

La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office spokesman Chris Burke said officers were unable to tie the man to the scene, so no ticket was written.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t write a citation because we couldn\u2019t prove that he was the one that started it,\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n

Evans said firefighters believe the fire was started by a cigarette.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously someone violating burn ban, smoking and discarding butts in the brush, and it just took off,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s innocent until proven guilty, but that\u2019s a lot of coincidence. Who\u2019s out walking on the road at 4 a.m. by themselves?\u201d<\/p>\n

Southwest Colorado is currently in Stage 2 fire restrictions, which limits smoking cigarettes to homes and cars.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

says fire could have impacted hundreds of homes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[350],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-99224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-fire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99224","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=99224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99224"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=99224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}