POSTED:   07/04/2012

Sitting at his desk in Redwood City, Calif., Manuel Navarro could only shake his head in sadness as the Waldo Canyon fire swept with fury through the Mountain Shadows neighborhood June 26.

“I knew it would happen,” said Navarro, who was chief of the Colorado Springs Fire Department from 1994 until 2008. “I knew the terrain of Waldo Canyon and all the neighborhoods in the area.”

As chief, he always knew that those foothills neighborhoods were susceptible to exactly what happened last week.

In a 2004 article in the Colorado Springs Gazette, Navarro was among fire officials trying to get out the word that “a monster sleeps on the Front Range, ready to awaken, ready to kill and ready to destroy.”

Colorado wildfire: Former chief “knew” Waldo Canyon would happen – The Denver Post