Colorado County fire ravages several thousand acres
| 
Firefighters in Colorado County are battling a massive forest fire that began around 3 p.m. on July 4. The fire is about five miles northeast of Columbus, Texas. Six departments have teamed together to extinguish the blaze that has swept across several thousand acres. In addition to ground crews, a helicopter from the Texas State Forestry is dropping water in an effort to stop the spread.
Crews have the outer edge of the fire contained and are working to extinguish the rest. Police say no injuries or homes are damaged.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
By Nakia Cooper / KHOU.com
About This Post
it was massive!! it looked like a large mushroom cloud. traffic was super slow. i was on the way back from San Antonio.
was it on july 4th or 5th?
Are you sure it started Jul 4th and not the 5th, which is when I saw it.
I saw it all the way from Rosenberg, about 50 mi. SE of Columbus at about 3:30. Good thing I was going from Houston to SA. Even so, we had a couple of traffic slowdowns for no reason. We passed directly by about 4:30.
It was HUGE, all the way up to the clouds. The helicopter and small plane looked like a couple of ants circling a telephone pole.
It started about 3:00 pm July 4th. There has been 24 hr. firefighting since that time. Saturday 10 fire depts, Sunday 8 fire dept., Monday 7 fire dept. Tx Forestry Service has been on scene since Saturday when it started. Currently it is contained between 60 to 80 percent, however this can change quickly. One, two story weekend home was destroyed along with a couple of camphouses and a flat bed trailer. Not bad for a fire this size. The totally volunteer fire depts have done a fantastic job protecting the homes in the area.
This thing was enormous!! Truly, it looked like an atomic blast!! You could see it from miles and miles away. One lady, at a gas station in Columbus, told me that they had been watching the huge cloud all the way from Austin. I can not believe that there was not more press coverage on this thing. How did it start? For something that backed traffic up for miles and miles and miles on a major travel holiday, I would have thought you could turn on the radio or tv and hear something about this.
The fire started around 3:00 p.m. saturday afternoon on july 4th , and the first fire departments got the call at about 3:30 p.m. My cousins and myself could see the thunderstorm forming due to the size if the fire, my uncle said that he’d been hunting in new mexico one time and there was a fire in one of the valleys, and after the fact he and a friend got to talk to some of the firefighters that were battling the blaze, they said it had gotten so big, it had made its own thunderstorm and had started hailing on them in the fire, and due to the updraft it was ripping gigantic trees straight out of the ground.