The Lee Fire near Meeker is now over 116,000 acres, fire maps show, and has surpassed the Spring Creek Fire of 2018 as the state's fifth-largest wildfire.Over 1,000 firefighters and a dozen aircraft are involved in efforts to contain and extinguish the fire,

New mandatory evacuations were ordered in the Lee fire late Friday night and early Saturday morning as the blaze grew nearly 30,000 acres on Colorado’s Western Slope near Meeker.

A Colorado prison was evacuated due to a fast-growing wildfire that’s already one of the largest in state history, officials said. The ongoing spread of the Lee Fire in western Colorado forced the relocation of 179 incarcerated individuals at the Rifle Correctional Center to the Buena Vista Correctional Complex on Aug.