Some 50,000 more people were under evacuation orders Wednesday as another wind-blown wildfire hit California north of Los Angeles. The fires have again renewed focus on dangers in what it known as the wildland-urban interface or WUI, where fire has marched into urban areas in both California and Colorado with greater losses than ever in recent years.
“It was a couple hundred yards from the first house. And only because the wind died down completely did they get a really good handle on it,” recalled Todd Houghton, a realtor in the Willow Springs area up against the mountains south of Highway 285, who has become a community organizer. He was remembering the 2022 Snow Creek Fire that had people packing up to evacuate.
“That was a wake-up call,” said Houghton, who has gotten wildfire mitigation certification as he thinks about the open space areas and the thousand or so homes that are potentially at risk…