Boulder Fourmile Canyon update: 87 percent containment, list of 166 destroyed homes

On Friday, officials predicted that Boulder's Fourmile Canyon fire would be contained today -- and despite warm weather over the weekend, that goal still seems within reach. At this writing, containment is estimated at 87 percent, with 100 percent containment predicted for 6 p.m. this evening.

That's the word from Greg Heule, public information officer trainee for the Great Basin Type 1 management team, who's been working the early shift at the incident command post for much of this past week. But challenges continue for firefighters due to the weekend rise of the Reservoir Road fire near Loveland, which is burning largely unchecked at this point, with hundreds of acres destroyed.

According to Heule, "we've got 915 personnel" working the 6,250 acres of Fourmile, "but that's in flux. We already have some resources up at the fire west of Loveland, and resources we are staging at at this point that won't go out on this fire, but won't go there until we have a better handle on what they need."

Those resources include some that fly.

"We've got three Type-1 helicopters that are working on that fire," he points out. "Because air resources are shared resources, if we need one of those helicopters, it can come back to our fire, because it's not that far away."

Heavy air tankers are also now assigned to Reservoir Road. That leaves a Type-3 helicopter at Fourmile "mostly for if we need an emergency evac -- if someone's injured, or if we need air resources to put out hot spots," Heule notes. "But the Reservoir Road fire will use the concentration of resources."