Thousands have been forced to evacuate as hundreds of homes, hotels, shopping centre are destroyed in Colorado fires.
An estimated 580 homes, a hotel, and a shopping center were razed by the fire in the wind-fueled wildfires outside Denver, officials said on Thursday evening.
At least one first responder and six others were injured, though Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle acknowledged there could be more injuries and deaths due to the intensity of fires that quickly swept across the region as winds gusted up to 105mph.
The first fire erupted just before 10.30 am and was “attacked pretty quickly and laid down later in the day and is currently being monitored” with no structures lost, Sheriff Pelle said.
A second wildfire reported just after 11 am, “ballooned and spread rapidly east,” he said. The blaze spans 2.5sqm and has engulfed parts of the area in smoky, orangish skies and sent residents scrambling for safety.
The activity of the fires, which are burning unusually late into the winter season, will depend on how the winds behave overnight and could determine when crews can go in and begin assessing the damage and searching for any victims.
“This is the kind of fire we can’t fight head-on,” Sheriff Pelle said. “We had deputy sheriffs and firefighters in areas that had to pull out because they just got overrun.”
Governor declares state of emergency
The fires prompted Governor Jared Polis to declare a state of emergency, allowing the state to access disaster emergency funds.
Evacuations have been ordered for the city of Louisville, home to about 21,000 people, and Superior, which has another 13,000 residents.
The neighboring towns are roughly 20 miles northwest of Denver in an area filled with middle and upper-middle-class subdivisions surrounded by shopping centres, parks, and schools. The area is in between Denver and Boulder, a foothills college town home to the University of Colorado.
Residents evacuated fairly calmly and orderly, but the winding streets in the suburban subdivisions quickly became clogged as people tried to get out. It sometimes took cars as long as 45 minutes to advance about a half-mile.
Small fires cropped up here and there in surprising places – on the grass in a median or a dumpster in the middle of a parking lot – as wind gusts caused the fire to jump and spread. Shifting winds caused the skies to turn from clear to smoky and then back again as emergency sirens blared nearby.
Some of the several blazes in the area were sparked by downed power lines.
Six people who were injured in the fires were being treated at UC Health Broomfield Hospital, spokesperson Kelli Christensen said. A nearby portion of US Highway 36 also was shut down.
Colorado’s Front Range, where most of the state’s population lives, had an extremely dry and mild fall, and winter so far has continued to be mostly dry. Denver set a record for most consecutive days without snow before it got a small storm on December 10. It hasn’t snowed since, though the snow was expected in the region on Friday.
One video captured by a bystander outside a Superior Costco store showed an apocalyptic scene with winds whipping through barren 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 similar dark skies while returning to their Louisville home from Denver International Airport after being away for the holidays.
As they were sitting on the bus going toward Boulder, Ms. Angstman recalled instantly leaving clear blue skies and entering clouds of brown and yellow smoke.
“The wind rocked the bus so hard that I thought the bus would tip,” she wrote in a message to The Associated Press.
‘The sky was dark, dark brown’
The visibility was so poor that the bus had to pull over and they waited for a half-hour until a regional transit authority van escorted them to a turnaround on the highway. There she saw four separate fires burning in bushes across the freeway, she said.
“The sky was dark, dark brown, and the dirt was blowing in swirls across the sidewalk like snakes,” she said.
Ms. Angstman later ended up evacuating, getting in a car with her husband, and driving northeast without knowing where they would end up.
Vignesh Kasinath, an assistant professor of biochemistry at the University of Colorado in Boulder, evacuated from a neighborhood in Superior with his wife and her parents. Mr. Kasinath said the family was overwhelmed because of the sudden evacuation warning and anxious from the chaos while trying to leave.
“It’s only because I am active on Twitter I came to know about this,” said Mr. Kasinath, who said he did not receive an official evacuation notice from authorities.
