After a day of responding to the over 1,600 acre Marshall fire blaze as it tore through Superior and Louisville and made its way into Broomfield, Boulder County Sheriff, Joe Pelle held a press conference.
Pelle was joined by Gov. Jared Polis, Louisville Mayor Ashley Stolzmann, Louisville Police Chief Dave Hayes and Director of Colorado Public Safety Stan Hilkey.
Preliminary reports suggest that downed power lines, broken by 100 to 115 mph winds, were the cause of the two fires that started late this morning, the fires now referred to as the Marshall fire and the Middle Fork fire.
Reports for the Middle Fork fire came in swiftly allowing firefighters to squash the fire quickly, Pelle said. The fire is currently being monitored. No structures were reported to be lost in this fire.
The Marshall fire took off at a much faster pace, covering the length of a football field in mere seconds, Polis stated.
“There was very little time to get out, very little time to grab the important parts of your (Coloradans) life,” Pollis said.
The fire was reported just after 11 a.m. Thursday near S. Foothills and Marshall Road, Pelle reported.
The fire spread through Superior, parts of Louisville and unincorporated Boulder County.
First responders were unable to utilize aircraft designed to battle fires due to the intense wind speeds. If the winds die down, Hilkey said there are planes available to help map the fire at night and to pinpoint hotspots unseen by crews on the ground.
At 5 p.m. this evening, Pelle announced that hundreds of homes in the Superior area were lost to the fires. He relayed that approximately 370 homes were destroyed in the Sagmore subdivision west of Superior and potential of another 210 homes in Old Town Superior. There were other homes in the area lost and Pelle estimated over 500 were burned.
He added that the Target shopping complex in Superior was on fire at the time of his report and the Element Hotel was fully engulfed.
Damage assessment teams will deploy Friday.
“I want to assure that our fire personnel are working as hard as they can to save additional structures as we speak and when it is safe to do so we will start the emotional and painful process of assessing damages,” Pelle said.
As of the press conference, Pelle said there were no reports of casualties or missing persons and only one report of an officer being injured. The officer’s injury was due to debris thrown by the wind hitting his eye and is considered minor.
“However, I would like to emphasize that due to the magnitude of this fire, the intensity of this fire and its presence in such a heavily populated area, we would not be surprised if there are injuries or fatalities,” Pelle said.
Around 3 p.m. UCHealth Broomfield reported it had treated six people with burns related to the fire.
As the blaze continued into the night, Pelle reminded locals that the fire is still considered volatile and unsafe, encouraging anyone in its path to evacuate and for all others to stay alert to new reports by officials.
Pelle, with the help of Polis and Willis, called in 12 two-person teams of the National Guard today. These teams are expected to arrive this evening to help with overnight efforts.
The evening efforts will depend on the winds, which have been expected to die down into the nighttime hours, Pelle said.
“This is the kind of fire you can’t fight head-on. When that single fire engine and police officer pull into a subdivision and 12 homes are burning all they can try to do is protect the next one,” Pelle said.
