’War room’ type effort places firefighting assets

Flames eat through the second story of a home in Colorado as a car sits in the driveway. In the background, an entire neighborhood glows orange as it goes up in flames. A wall of fire consumes the front of a home as a lone firefighter shoots futilely blasts it with water. A heavy air tanker working to slow the flames is dwarfed as a massive plume of smoke looms in the background. The dramatic images provide just a glimpse of this year’s fire season — one that has broken records in New Mexico, forced thousands of people to flee their homes in Colorado and left an ashy, black scar across more than 1.6 million acres of the nation’s forests.