As wildfires rage in the West – the U.S. Forest Service, Interior Department and FEMA have announced that additional resources have been deployed to support state and local partners. The National Interagency Fire Center has raised the national preparedness level to level four – which triggers increased planning for additional resources and greater oversight of resource allocations in order to achieve the most effective deployment. The severity of current fire activity is highlighted by the fact that more than 84-hundred personnel, 578 fire engines and 79 helicopters are operating on wildfires around the U.S. There are currently large wildfires burning in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming.

The Waldo Canyon fire in the hillsides west of Colorado Springs stretches three directions and has consumed more than 15-thousand acres of forested land since Saturday.