Hundreds of homes and thousands of hectares destroyed by fire in Colorado

US officials said today that hundreds of houses have been destroyed in the Colorado Springs area, one of the most affected by the fire that has destroyed thousands of hectares in the state of Colorado (U.S. Midwest). Mayor of this city, the second largest in the state after Denver, Steve Bach, told a press conference that "hundreds of houses have been destroyed" in the Waldo Canyon fire, although no figures, as recorded by the Denver newspaper Post. Bach explained that the area is being assessed and the authorities are in the process of counting the affected homes to notify their owners before making public the data. Some 32,000 people have been evacuated in the last five days and as aerial images disseminated through the local media is estimated to have burned about 300 homes in the neighborhood of Mountain Shadows. The fire began on June 23, for reasons still unknown being investigated by local authorities and the FBI, and has extended to 18,500 acres. changing winds and high temperatures have hampered the work of firefighters and rescue teams have contained only five percent of the fire. The Air Force has joined efforts and has sent 35 helicopters military and four C-130 tanker aircraft. A total of eight fires are active in the state of Colorado, which so far is the worst fire season in the last decade. State Governor, John Hickenlooper, has signed three executive orders and declared "disaster zone" areas affected by fires in High Park, Springer and Stuart Hole, to provide additional assistance to the suppression efforts. U.S. President Barack Obama spoke by phone Wednesday with Colorado's governor and the mayor of Colorado Springs and told them he plans to visit the area on Friday. The area west of the country is being affected by an early fire season. Other states like Montana, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota , New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and California, according to the National Center for Integration of Fires, fires are also suffering. In late May a fire in the Gila National Forest of New Mexicoconsumed at least 77,000 hectares, which made ​​him the most of the state's history.According to experts, the combination of drought and low humidity, climate change and changes in land use is likely to entail a series of similar fires in the western U.S. states this season. The number of fires in Colorado have increased over the last decade and therefore the number of people living in risk areas. According to research by I-News Network, a nonprofit organization in Colorado, has been population movement in recent years to "red" state, and qualified by the risk of occurrence of forest fires. However, although federal authorities have said that this year the fire season has started earlier in the northern Rockies, the number of fires and area burned across the country is still lower than the average of the last ten years in this time of year, according to statistics from the federal agency of fire, quoted by the Star Tribune.