Lake Minnequa fire scares neighbors as flames burn hundreds of feet from homes

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) - For many residents who live on the shores of Lake Minnequa in Pueblo, the open space next to the lake catching fire is a once-a-year occurrence, exacerbated by tough-to-mitigate terrain.

The Pueblo Fire Department explained that the houses were never in danger, and evacuations were never ordered. Still, for those who dealt with smoke late Thursday night, fires like that start around once a year in the area.

"It was going, gosh, 30 feet, 40 feet up in the air -- the flames," John Michael said. "And it was that dry weed that feeds off of the lake.  And we've had several problems in the past.  This is like the second or third time since I've lived here that we've had this happen."

Michael lives two blocks from where flames burned grass yesterday.

"It came back this direction and just kind of settled here at night," Michael said about the smoke. He says he turned on the air filter in his home last night in an attempt to make the air safer to breathe.

The Pueblo Fire Department tells KRDO13 that mitigation is tough in the area since the lake has receded and left behind a swamp, which feeds the tall weeds. While they keep grass short in other areas of the park, those tall and inaccessible weeds produced many of the tall flames and black smoke.

The Pueblo parks department tells KRDO13 they just got funding to do a study on Lake Minnequa to explore dredging the lake to get rid of the weeds. The study will be completed in a year, and the parks director for Pueblo says the project will likely take anywhere between $4 and 7 million.

In the meantime, the neighborhoods surrounding the lake are left with a high fire risk as soon as those tall weeds begin to dry up during hot and dry summer days.

"Every year it catches on fire, all the weeds around the lake.  My granddaughter and I come and fish on the north side.  They should just let them all burn down and make something nice," Judy Leonidas said.

Leonidas says she lives roughly five blocks from the lake and was worried when she saw how high the flames were yesterday.

"Almost every year - it catches on fire," Leonidas said.