Estimated Costs For Colorado's Jaw-Dropping Wildfire Season In 2018: $130 Million
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The fire sparked by lightning that flashed, smoldered and then flared again from July through September, prompting the evacuation of 200 homes and growing to 20,000 acres, would end up costing an estimated $25 million. That’s a combination of mostly federal money, since the fire broke out on federal land and burned mostly U.S. Forest Service acreage, plus state and county funds.
The drought-ravaged summer of 2018 was an expensive one for firefighting, with costs reaching an estimated $130 million for 18 fires, according to documents received by The Colorado Sun through a public records request to the state Division of Fire Protection and Control. Of that, the state’s share is more than $40 million. That’s six times more than Colorado spent on fighting wildfires in 2017 and two and a half times what it spent in 2016. Ten fires last year cost just more than $10 million combined.
Details about how federal dollars were spent at Silver Creek and other forest fires were not available because the federal agency has not responded to a public information request from the Sun filed months ago.
Still, an up-close view of one fire camp provided a snapshot of the multimillion-dollar business of fighting fires, a massive industrial complex that extends beyond fire crews to private helicopter and airplane pilots on contract, catering companies, suppliers of portable toilets and mobile Internet providers.
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https://coloradosun.com/2018/11/01/wildfire-costs-colorado-2018/