DENVER (AP) – An estimated 580 houses, a hotel and a shopping center burned down and tens of thousands of people were evacuated in wind-powered forest fires outside of Denver, officials said Thursday evening.
Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said only one injury was reported but did not rule out more serious injuries or deaths later found due to the intensity of the fires that swept rapidly across the area as gusts of wind reached up to 169 km / h became ).
The first fire broke out just before 10:30 am and was “attacked fairly quickly and put down later in the day and is currently under surveillance” with no structure lost, Pelle said.
A second wildfire, reported shortly after 11 a.m., “ballooned and spread rapidly east,” Pelle said. The fire covers an area of 6.5 square kilometers and has shrouded parts of the area in smoky, orange skies and brought the residents to safety.
The wind activity tonight will determine when the crews can board and begin their damage assessment and victim search.
“That’s the kind of fire we can’t fight directly,” said Pelle. “We actually had deputy sheriffs and firefighters in areas that had to leave because they were being overrun,” he added.
The city of Louisville, of approximately 21,000 residents, was ordered to evacuate after the residents of Superior, of 13,000 residents, were told to leave the country. The neighboring cities are about 20 miles northwest of Denver.
Several fires broke out in the area on Thursday, at least some that were triggered by fallen power lines.
Six people injured in the fires would be treated at UCHealth Broomfield Hospital, spokeswoman Kelli Christensen said. A nearby section of US Highway 36 has also been decommissioned.
The Colorado Front Range, home to most of the state’s population, had an extremely dry and mild fall, and winters so far have been mostly dry. However, snow was expected in the region on Friday.
A video captured by a viewer outside a Superior Costco store showed an apocalyptic scene with winds lashing through bare trees in the parking lot, surrounded by gray skies, a hazy sun, and small fires scattered across the ground .
Leah Angstman and her husband saw a similar dark sky when they returned to their Louisville home after their absence from Denver International Airport. As they sat on the bus going to Boulder, Angstman remembered that they immediately left the clear blue sky and entered clouds of brown and yellow smoke.
“The wind shook the bus so hard I thought the bus was going to tip over,” she wrote in a message to The Associated Press.
The visibility was so poor that the bus had to stop and they waited half an hour until a delivery van from the regional transport authority escorted them to a turn on the motorway. There she saw four individual fires burning in the bushes across the street, she said.
“The sky was dark, dark brown, and the dirt was blowing like snakes across the sidewalk,” she said.
Angstman later ended up on the evacuation, got into a car with her husband, and drove northeast without knowing where they would end up.
Vignesh Kasinath, assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was evacuated from a Superior neighborhood with his wife and parents. Kasinath said the family were overwhelmed by the sudden evacuation warning and were concerned about the chaos when they tried to leave.
“I only found out about it because I was active on Twitter,” said Kasinath, who said he had not received an official evacuation notice from the authorities.
The fires prompted Governor Jared Polis to declare a state of emergency, which gives the state access to funds for disaster relief.
The evacuations come as climate change makes weather more extreme and forest fires more frequent and more destructive, scientists say. A historic drought and heat waves made fighting wildfires difficult in the western United States.
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The Associated Press Writer Colleen Slevin contributed to this report. Nieberg is a corps member of the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a not-for-profit national utility that places journalists on local newsrooms to cover undercover issues.
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