Will Grandbois

Update: As of Friday morning, the evacuation order for homes near the Red Canyon Fire has been lifted. The fire is now 75% contained and several engines and two SEATs have been released from duty.
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Though the plume of smoke that shrouded the lower Valley on Monday evening has mostly dissipated, the Red Canyon Fire continues to burn along the flank of Lookout Mountain. For newcomers to the area, it’s an unnerving welcome to the arid West. For longtime locals, it dredges up not-to-distant memories of 2002’s Coal Seam fire, which torched more than ten thousand acres and at least two dozen homes, and 1994’s Storm King fire, which claimed the lives of fourteen firefighters.

At an estimated 390 acres, the Red Canyon Fire has not yet approached the severity of either. After it’s initial flare up from 15 to 150 acres on Monday evening, the fire progressed fitfully, making short runs through mixed pinyon-juniper with islands of sage. Containment is at 27%, with about 100 personnel; two helicopters, two single engine and two heavy air tankers; and roughly 20 engines assigned to fight the fire. Although resources have been difficult to obtain due to other fires across the west, the Rocky Mountain Area Incident Management Team A has been assigned to Red Canyon, and took command Wednesday at 6 am MST.

What happens when a renowned scientist has an experience of the afterlife that changes the way he looks at … everything? Find out this Friday, Aug. 9, at 7 p.m. in the Roaring Fork High School auditorium when bestselling author Dr. Eben Alexander pays a special visit to Carbondale.

Monks from the 600-year-old Gaden Shartse Monastery of Tibet visit Carbondale for presentations on Aug. 12-14. They are being hosted by Davi Nikent and Green Weaver.

The historic Thompson House, Carbondale’s pioneer-home museum, is now officially on the National Register of Historic Places. The announcement was made by Beth White, executive director of the Mt. Sopris Historical Society, on Monday.

Carbondale restaurant-owner Freddy Argueta Cabrera, 39, is the prime suspect in a fatal shooting after turning himself into Mesa County law enforcement authorities on Aug. 1, according to a Garfield County sheriff’s department press release.
Cabrera owns El Horizonte restaurants in Carbondale and Glenwood Springs, and lives in Blue Lake in El Jebel.
The shooting victim was a 21-year-old male and an employee at the Carbondale El Horizonte. An 18-year-old woman female was also shot in the incident and airlifted to a hospital in Denver.
According to published reports, the shooting took place at about 11 p.m. on July 31 at a south Glenwood Springs apartment complex near the Roaring Fork River on County Road 154.
A Garfield County sheriff’s department spokesman said an investigation is under way.

Mark Chain, Shelle de Beque and her husband Hank van Berlo, all of whom are 60ish, are planning or engaged with “encore careers.” They are part of a national trend.

This month’s First Friday on Aug. 2 heads to the beach, with live music, limbo, Hula-Hoop contests, a conga line down Main Street and goldfish races in front of the Black Nugget.

Just before Dandelion Day in May, Carbondale resident Alejandra Rico launched a campaign to raise awareness and funds to support an independent documentary film, “Sunnú”, about the struggle of indigenous northern Mexican communities to preserve their native corn seed and their way of life.

The new Carbondale Branch Library has more of everything than before: square footage (13,000 now compared to 3,200 at the old Gordon Cooper Library), books (20,500 compared to 18,020 before), study rooms (four now compared to zero before) and public computers (20 now compared to six before).