With little time to get out, hundreds of Colorado residents lose their homes in a ferocious wildfire
Dec 31, 2021, 5:52 AM
LOUISVILLE, CO - DECEMBER 30: A home burns after a fast moving wildfire swept through the area in the Centennial Heights neighborhood of Louisville, Colorado on December 30, 2021. State officials estimated some 600 homes had already been lost in multiple areas around Boulder County and were fueled by winds that gusted upwards of 100 miles per hour at times during the day. (Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)
(Photo by Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)
(CNN) — A vicious wildfire that began Thursday morning in Boulder County, Colorado, swallowed about 1,600 acres in a matter of hours, burning the homes of hundreds of residents who had little warning and little time to get out.
Amid historically powerful winds, some 370 homes were destroyed in a single subdivision just west of the town of Superior, while another 210 homes may have been lost in Old Town Superior, the sheriff said Thursday. No deaths or missing people were reported immediately.
Chris Smith and his wife, of downtown Superior, got a notification Thursday morning from their daughters’ day care in nearby Louisville to “come pick up the girls,” he told CNN affiliate KCNC. “Please act quickly,” city officials there had urged in their evacuation order.
“I called my wife, and she started collecting valuables and clothes to evacuate,” Smith said. He drove through smoke on his way there and on his way back.
Across the fire zone, roads were blocked by smoke and traffic gridlock as people tried to make their way out.
At a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Superior, families with young children could see smoke out wide windows and made their way toward an exit, video taken by Jason Fletcher shows.
“Right now,” one woman said. “It’s OK.”
“I’m scared,” said a child as another woman leaned hard into the front door to pry it open against blowing wind.
At a Costco store in Superior, shoppers were told to calmly leave their carts and go, said Hunt Frye, who took video from the hazy parking lot. A shopping center and a hotel in Superior also burned Thursday, Pelle said.
From an ICU room at Avista Adventist Hospital in Louisville, white smoke clouded a charcoal sky just across the parking lot and a street, video from Kara Plese shows. The hospital was fully evacuated and patients transferred or discharged, officials there said. Good Samaritan Medical Center in nearby Lafayette also began transferring some of its most critical and fragile patients, according to a news release.
Flames burned right next to roads in Superior and Louisville, and thick smoke made visibility next to impossible, video posted by Broomfield Police shows. Another clip shows homes engulfed in flames.
Downed power lines may be the cause
Downed power lines appear to have caused the Marshall Fire, said Sheriff Joe Pelle, citing preliminary reports. Deputies confirmed downed lines in the fire zone, and a final determination will be made in the coming days, he added. Also sparked was the Middle Fork Fire, which was quickly “laid down,” the sheriff said in a news conference.
Winds had dropped by early Friday to below 20 mph, and the area is under a winter weather warning, with heavy snowfall expected by sunrise in the drought-stricken state, CNN meteorologist Robert Shackelford said.
Wind gusts Thursday — some surpassing 100 mph in Jefferson and Boulder counties — pushed the blaze “down a football field in a matter of seconds,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said.
“There’s no way,” he said, “to quantify in any financial way, the price of a loss — of losing the chair that was handed down to you from your grandmother, of losing your childhood yearbooks, of losing your photos, of losing your computer files — which hundreds of Colorado families have experienced today with no warning.”
More than 15,000 customers in Colorado were without power by early Friday, with the vast majority in Boulder County. At least six people were being treated for injuries related to one of the fires, a spokesperson for UCHealth told CNN on Thursday. A law enforcement officer suffered a minor eye injury from blowing debris.
Recovery plans are already underway
Though evacuees were not yet allowed to return Thursday night, some already were working to begin the recovery. A search party was scheduled on Facebook for the weekend. On another Facebook page, dozens posted about animals they’re looking for or found in and around the burned areas.
One insurance agent in Superior had heard from a client who believed they had lost their home, she told CNN affiliate KMGH.
“It’s just something you don’t plan on. It’s just devastating,” she said.
The sheriff would not be surprised if the numbers of casualties or missing people soon change, given the fire’s size and intensity, he said Thursday.
Polis on Thursday declared a state of emergency.
“This area, for those who don’t know this area of Boulder County, is right and around suburban subdevelopments, stores. It’s like the neighborhood that you live in; it’s like the neighborhood that any of us live in,” the governor said Thursday.
Evacuation centers were open, including one for evacuees who have Covid-19, Polis said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency also announced late Thursday it had authorized the use of federal funds to help fight the fire.
“We are devastated by the destruction and losses we are experiencing,” the town of Superior wrote on Twitter Thursday evening, just hours after announcing its evacuation order.
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