Fueled by high heat and dry conditions, major wildfires continued to burn across thousands of acres of wildland near Loveland, Lyons and in Jefferson County on Wednesday, killing at least one person and destroying multiple homes.
Gov. Jared Polis declared disaster emergencies for multiple fires on Tuesday, which activates a state emergency operations plan and directs state officials to “take all necessary and appropriate actions to assist with response, recovery and mitigation efforts” in the fires.
Quarry fire near Deer Creek Canyon
Air support reached Jefferson County just before noon Wednesday, with four helicopters and a large air tanker working to douse the Quarry fire with water and fire retardant.
Nearly 600 homes in Jefferson County were evacuated overnight Wednesday after a wildfire broke out near Deer Creek Canyon and more evacuations could be on the way, sheriff’s officials said.
“Everything is stacked against us,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Mark Techmeyer said in a Wednesday morning briefing. “We’ve got low resources, we’ve got treacherous terrain, we’ve got very flammable fuel.”
Techmeyer said crews from more than a dozen fire agencies responded to Jefferson County on Wednesday, but the two other major fires burning near Lyons and Loveland have spread Colorado’s fire resources thin.
“We’re still in the woods,” he said Wednesday afternoon after air support arrived. “We’ve still got a long way to go.”
Currently, fire crews and aircraft in Jefferson County are working to suppress the fire. If the flames spread to any of the evacuated neighborhoods, Techmeyer said the focus will switch to protecting those homes.
As of 11:45 a.m. Wednesday, the Quarry fire was burning on more than 200 acres of Jefferson County land just west of Grizzly Drive and was still growing, Techmeyer said. The cause of the fire remains unknown.
Evacuations started just before midnight Tuesday when sheriff’s officials announced mandatory evacuations for the Deer Creek Mesa, Sampson and Maxwell subdivisions southwest of Ken Caryl.
County officials said the fire was discovered by a sheriff’s deputy around 9 p.m. and was moving southeast. The fire bloomed from a 10-foot section to the size of 37 football fields in less than an hour.
By 1 a.m. Wednesday, 300 homes in the three subdivisions were being evacuated as deputies and firefighters knocked on doors and sent out emergency alerts, sheriff’s officials said.
As the fire continued to grow overnight, sheriff’s officials announced mandatory evacuations for another 275 homes in the McKinney and Murphy subdivisions.
“Every neighborhood in this area is at risk,” Techmeyer said during the Wednesday afternoon briefing. “This fire is not an easy fight. … There’s not one [neighborhood] that’s in immediate danger, they all are.”
Techmeyer said the terrain is treacherous for firefighters — steep, rocky areas filled with debris, fallen trees and rattlesnake nests make it difficult for ground crews to fight the flames.
Multiple agencies responded to the late-night blaze, including crews from West Metro Fire Rescue, South Metro Fire Rescue, Inter-Canyon Fire, the North Folk Fire Department and Jefferson County Open Space.
As of Wednesday morning, 75 firefighters were working on the ground to fight the flames, Techmeyer said, adding that no injuries have been reported and no homes have been lost.
Silver Ranch and Silver Ranch South remain on pre-evacuation orders.
At the Dakota Ridge High School, the wildfire’s evacuation site, John Banks coughed in the parking lot as smoke from the fire threatening his neighborhood hung heavily in the air.
Banks and his wife, Diane, fled the Quarry fire early Wednesday after a 1:30 a.m. phone call ordered them to evacuate.
The couple slept in their car overnight with their rescue cat, Mea, and the few items they scooped from their home after the evacuation call: medications, some clothes, John’s oxygen tanks and cancer medications, and Mea’s food and litter.
They left everything else behind in the home where they’ve lived for 34 years.
“These are just things,” said Banks, 78.
He paused, emotion creeping into his voice.
“If you lose things, you still have your friends, your family.”
The couple found a hotel to stay in for the next night and planned to spend Wednesday going to pre-scheduled doctor appointments.
“Life throws spitballs at you,” John Banks said. “But you keep going.”
When the couple arrived at the evacuation center at Dakota Ridge High School at 3 a.m. Wednesday, they were one of the first people to arrive.
By 9 a.m., dozens of cars were parked at the school — some of the nearly 600 households ordered to evacuate from the Quarry fire. A few evacuees took time to walk their dogs. In the next lot over, a Denver Fire Department crew suited up to respond to the fire.
Elden Coombs, 85, sat with his neighbors in the parking lot waiting for news. He moved to the Homewood Park neighborhood in 1969 and has lived through two other fires, a blizzard and two floods.
He left his home after getting the evacuation call at about 2 a.m. He grabbed some clothes, important documents and his medicine and fled.
“I haven’t been to bed,” he said. “I just hope they get the fire under control.”
Coombs didn’t know where he would go next, if he couldn’t go home. Authorities told him the evacuation could last days.
Stone Canyon fire near Lyons
At least one person is dead and five homes were charred in the Stone Canyon fire near Lyons, fire officials said Wednesday.
What started Tuesday afternoon as a small, 30-acre fire near Lyons quickly grew to more than 1,300 acres, forcing evacuations, fire officials said.
As of 10 a.m. Wednesdsay, the Stone Canyon fire in Boulder County had burned around 1,320 acres with no containment, sheriff Curtis Johnson said in a morning briefing.
Mandatory evacuation orders were sent out less than an hour after the fire was reported Tuesday and quickly expanded into Larimer County, fire officials said. Shifting winds and the fire’s quick spread forced evacuations in the town of Lyons later that afternoon.
As the winds shifted Wednesday — and the fire started moving northeast — the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office lifted the evacuation orders for Lyons and Steamboat Mountain.
Johnson said the sheriff’s office doesn’t anticipate any more immediate evacuations in or around Lyons, and that the office is working on a plan to get people back into their homes as the fire winds down.
At least five structures have been burnt by the fire, Johnson said, adding that human remains were found in one of the burnt homes. Sheriff’s officials are not aware of any other missing persons reports at this time.
Johnson said it’s difficult to tell exactly how many buildings have been affected by the fire because there’s a large number of outbuildings — including barns and sheds — in the area that have been destroyed.
Air support stopped overnight, but planes and helicopters are taking to the sky again Wednesday morning.
Johnson said the Boulder County fire will continue to share resources with the Alexander Mountain fire as air teams are directed where they can be most effective.
“The conditions are about as bad as they can be to fight this fire,” Johnson said in a briefing Tuesday afternoon. “I expect it will take days for us to be able to really manage it.”
At Hygiene Feed and Mercantile southeast of Lyons, owner Jay French said evacuees came in to buy feed for displaced animals Wednesday morning. He watched the fire from his store as temperatures rose above 80 degrees around 9 a.m.
“I cannot see flames. I can see smoke,” he said. “It looks like the wind is still low at this point because it is billowing straight up.”
The wildfire is burning on land just 8 miles south of the Alexander Mountain fire, but fire officials said they are hopeful the two blazes will not connect.
About 70 firefighters and multiple aircraft worked to slow the fire down Tuesday and protect both structures and people in the area, according to fire officials. Several aircraft were on the scene within minutes after being diverted from the Alexander Mountain fire to the north.
Rough boundaries of the mandatory evacuation zone Wednesday include Bear Trap Gulch and Cattle Drive Road in Larimer County to the north; Rabbit Mountain and Carter Lake Reservoir to the east; Indian Mountain and U.S. 36 in Lyons to the south; and Elk Ridge and the end of Hell Canyon Road to the west.
“If people could just be mindful about local orders and (fire) restrictions, that would really help us a lot,” said Boulder County sheriff’s spokesman Vinnie Montez. “It’s very dry.”
As of Wednesday morning, Boulder County officials had sent mandatory evacuation notices to 2,286 contacts, the sheriff’s office said.
Contacts do not equal the number of people evacuated because households may have one or multiple contacts on file with the county’s emergency alert system and not everyone contacted chose to leave the area, according to sheriff’s officials.
Several roads are closed in the area Wednesday morning for firefighting efforts, including Blue Mountain Road, Steamboat Valley Road, Stone Canyon Drive, Nolan Drive and North 53rd Street.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved funding Wednesday to support firefighting costs in Boulder and Larimer counties.
“At the time of the request for assistance with the Stone Canyon Fire, the fire was threatening more than 480 homes and other structures as well as roads, bridges, infrastructure and utilities,” FEMA officials said in a news release. “Two structures have been destroyed and injuries have been sustained by four firefighters.”
The federal organization will fund up to 75% of the state’s firefighting costs. The grant does not help individual home or business owners and does not cover other infrastructure damage.
Alexander Mountain fire near Loveland
The Alexander Mountain fire raced across more than 5,000 acres of national forest land near Loveland on Tuesday, fueled by high temperatures and low humidity, fire officials said.
As of Wednesday morning, the fire was burning on 5,080 acres in the Arapaho and Roosevelt National Forests north of U.S. 34, according to U.S. Forest Service officials. Monday night, officials had estimated flames had charred 950 acres.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency approved funding Wednesday to support firefighting costs in Boulder and Larimer counties.
“At the time of the request for assistance with the Alexander Mountain Fire, it was threatening more than 2,000 homes and other structures, and is also threatening roads, bridges, infrastructure, utilities and watersheds,” FEMA officials said Wednesday. “The fire … has burned more than 5,000 acres of federal and private land, prompting mandatory evacuations for more than 4,000 people.”
The federal organization will fund up to 75% of the state’s firefighting costs. The grant does not help individual home or business owners and does not cover other infrastructure damage.
“With the low relative humidities overnight, we really saw the fire continue to burn throughout the night,” incident commander Mike Smith said in a briefing Tuesday.
Dry fuels, high temperatures and low humidity continued throughout the day Wednesday, making firefighting conditions difficult and fueling the spread of the flames, according to forest officials.
Wednesday afternoon, the Roosevelt National Forest closed parts of the forest near the Alexander Mountain fire to the public. The closure area included all forest land starting at U.S. 34, approximately 8 miles west of Loveland.
Forest roads — including Franz, Cedar Park, Storm Mountain Branch and Spruce Mountain loop — and trails — including Round Mountain Trail and Round Mountain Nature Trail — were also closed Wednesday, Roosevelt National Forest officials said.
Fire officials said they still don’t know what sparked the fire Monday morning, and crews have been unable to make a map of the wildfire’s footprint because of how quickly it’s changing. There was no containment as of Wednesday afternoon.
Fire activity is expected to increase throughout the day Wednesday as hot, dry and windy weather continues, according to a morning update.
According to Smith, the biggest concern for fire crews Wednesday is Cedar Grove and Cedar Park.
“It’s a tough place to fight fire,” Smith said in a Wednesday afternoon update. “It’s one way in, one way out. We’re doing what we can. … We’ve done a bunch of structure protection up there, preparing the structures to have the best chance possible to survive a fire environment.”
Thousands of evacuation orders have been issued.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Larimer County officials had sent mandatory evacuation notices to 3,245 contacts and more than 800 contacts remained on voluntary evacuation notice, the sheriff’s office said. Updated numbers were not available on Wednesday.
Contacts do not equal the number of people evacuated because households may have one or multiple contacts on file with the county’s emergency alert system, according to sheriff’s officials.
The rough boundaries of the mandatory evacuation zone include Storm Mountain to the north, Devil’s Backbone Open Space to the east, Indian Mountain to the south and Crosier Mountain to the west.
The Crosier Mountain area — including Dunraven Glade Road and Streamside Drive, as well as the area north of the Dunraven trailhead — and Devil’s Backbone Open Space are under voluntary evacuation orders Wednesday.
Fire officials said residents in voluntary evacuation areas should gather essential items and prepare to evacuate.
The blaze primarily grew to the west, north and east Tuesday in the National Forests, and shifting winds began pushing the fire farther north, fire officials said. The fire has not yet jumped U.S. 34 to the south and officials hope rocky terrain will slow down the fire’s growth.
According to Smith, fire scars to the north of the blaze are expected to slow down the fire Wednesday because of a lack of fuel in the area.
Smith said the fire had already moved into the Bobcat fire burn scar and crews saw an immediate decrease in fire behavior and growth in that area. He said the fire is expected to reach the Cameron fire burn scar Wednesday afternoon or evening, slowing the flames even more.
The biggest concern about fire growth lies on the blaze’s western border, Smith said Wednesday.
No structures have been confirmed as damaged or destroyed in the Alexander Mountain fire, and no injuries have been reported as of Wednesday morning.
Currant Creek fire near Cedaredge
The Currant Creek fire burning in Delta County about 5 miles east of Cedaredge has charred more than 180 acres, fire officials said Wednesday.
The fire was first reported Saturday around 2 p.m., “at which time it was growing rapidly and aggressively,” fire officials said. By the time firefighters arrived, it was already 80 acres, or about the size of 60 football fields.
Grasses and brush — including juniper, sage and oak trees — fueled the fire and allowed it to quickly grow to more than 180 acres, or nearly 140 football fields, fire officials said.
Shortly after fire crews arrived, a thunderstorm doused the fire area with heavy rain and hail, slowing the growth of the flames and making the fire easier for firefighters to tackle, fire officials said.
As of Wednesday morning, the fire was burning on 183 acres of land and was 20% contained, fire officials said in an update. Homes within the active fire perimeter on Currant Creek Road remain on pre-evacuation status.
No structures have been damaged by the fire, but five Delta County residents in three homes were evacuated as the fire approached, fire officials said. Helicopters are dropping water on the fire from the air Wednesday as firefighters on the ground work to finish a containment line.
Containment isn’t the end of the flames — it’s the status of a control line being completed around the fire that can be expected to stop the fire’s spread. A wildfire can continue to burn for days or weeks after being fully contained.
Fire officials are hopeful that the flames will not cross the ridge into the Dry Creek drainage, according to Wednesday’s update.
Due to high temperatures, low humidity levels and shortages of firefighting resources, Delta County remains under stage one fire restrictions, sheriff’s officials said.
Currant Creek Road remains closed to the public at the intersection with Cactus Park Road as fire crews work to fight the flames, officials said Wednesday. Only residents on the lower portions of Currant Creek Road, south of the fire, will be allowed past the road closure.
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