C.J. Moore stands where her front door used to be, before the Waldo Canyon Fire swept through the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in Colorado Springs, Colo. The fire destroyed more than 350 homes there.
Credit Kirk Siegler for NPR
Like many of her neighbors, Moore lost almost all of her belongings in the fire.
When the Waldo Canyon Fire roared over the hill behind the Mountain Shadows neighborhood in Colorado Springs, Colo., in June, nearly350 homes were destroyed. The blaze reduced this affluent neighborhood at the foot of the mountains to rubble.
C.J. Moore's home on Mirror Lake Court was among the casualties. The inferno was so hot, her stone driveway exploded. Only a few blackened trees sway eerily in the wind where her home used to stand.
Ted Engelmann, left, helps Yamilet Ortega, 3, second from left, and Kimberly Hernandez, 7, light candles, Saturday at a memorial near the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., where a gunman killed 12 people and wounded dozens of others Friday.
President Obama is in Aurora, Colo., on Sunday, meeting with the families of the victims of the deadly theater shootings that killed 12 people and injured 58 more. He'll also attend a memorial service and meet briefly with local officials.
Outside the movie theater where Friday's rampage occurred, there's a makeshift memorial at the edge of a hot and dusty lot. There are hundreds of candles and flowers, American flags and signs memorializing the victims.
"It's a sad time, very sad time," said William Cloud, a local professor, who came by to pay his respects.
Crews in Colorado are struggling to get the upper hand on the massive High Park wildfire that's destroyed more homes and property than any blaze in the state's history. With Colorado and the rest of the drought-plagued Southwest coming off a winter with record low snowpack, officials are braced for more fires. But previous forest management techniques could be partly to blame for the severe fires.
In the southern Rocky Mountains, several destructive wildfires are burning across a vast stretch of parched land and firefighters are struggling to gain control. In Colorado, the High Park Fire which flared up this past weekend is huge, even for a region where wildfires are common. The fires quickly engulfed more than 41,000 acres, destroying dozens of homes and buildings. And there's no end in sight. Kirk Siegler of member station KUNC brings us this update.
Cash-strapped states are embracing the millions of dollars in new tax revenue coming from shale oil and gas development. But there aren't enough inspectors to make sure the sites aren't polluting. The problem seems especially apparent in Colorado, which now has more than 47,000 active oil and gas wells but the state employs just 17 inspectors.
Economists say many industries are looking up this year. But perhaps none has a better outlook than the energy sector.
New drilling technologies and rising fuel prices have generated a boom in drilling — and lots of high-paying jobs for people with the skills to work in the oil patch. On some college campuses, companies are so eager to find petroleum engineers that they are offering jobs to students even before they have graduated.
Longtime Denver taxi driver Teddy Johnson participates in the "Taxis on Patrol" program, and has made two reports of potential safety issues so far.
Credit Craig F. Walker / The Denver Post
Max DeBarros drives his Metro Taxi in Denver. Police credit him with helping crack a hit-and-run case by recording and reporting the license plate number of the truck involved.
Some days, it would be easy to mistake the Metro Taxi dispatch center in Denver for a police station. Traffic and crime incidents are recorded in a special logbook, as drivers call in descriptions and locations to police.
It's part of a program called Taxis on Patrol. Just a day after the program began, a cab driver helped police make an arrest for a fatal hit-and-run. In the months since, eyewitness calls from cabbies using a bulletin system similar to an Amber Alert have led to hundreds of arrests.
Colorado holds its Republican caucuses on Tuesday. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul have focused their attention there recently. The state will also be a key battleground in the general election contest. From Denver, Kirk Siegler of member station KUNC reports.