Barbara Lawlor, Boulder County.  As the anniversary of the Cold Spring Fire nears, as temperatures heat up and daily breezes blow up dust, wild land fire danger escalates and residents look to the skies for rain.

It wasn't going to happen last week on Friday, and the diligence of Nederland Fire Protection District firefighter Dave Femmer prevented what could have become a major wild land fire.

From a vantage point on Ridge Road, he saw a plume of smoke on the West Magnolia campground area, called it in and headed up to the campground with his wild land gear. A bicyclist also called in the fire, which was described as being about a tenth of an acre in size.

The United States Forest Service firefighter crew showed up with their water bladders and hiked to the top of the hill overlooking Nederland and dug a line around the fire and doused it with the water from the packs on their back.

USFS firefighter Ed LeBlanc said the fire was located in one of the mitigation areas, where the area had been stripped of ladder fuels. He says the ground fuels would have burned themselves out with no trees to climb and torch.

About a dozen firefighters worked the fire as one ATV delivered fresh water packs. The duff was thick and stubborn, continuing to burn as the firefighters dug it up and covered it with dirt.

Last year's Cold Springs Fire started on July 9, ultimately destroying eight homes, 530 acres and evacuating thousands of people as air and land crews from all over the west arrived to stop the blaze. The fire was caused by a campfire that got out of control and blew up into the trees.

(Originally published in the June 22, 2017 print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)