Colorado & Denver News

  Update: Officials said the fire jumped Olde Stage Road around 10:25 p.m. Wednesday to the west and more evacuations were ordered on the west side of the road.

BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4/AP) ―Three wind-driven wildfires raced across Boulder County grasslands on Wednesday, destroying at least four structures and prompting mandatory evacuations of at least 500 homes.

Sheriff's Cmdr. Phil West said two firefighters suffered minor injuries.

Residents were ordered to leave more than 500 homes on the north side of Boulder, county spokeswoman Barbara Halpin said. At least one other neighborhood north of the city was evacuated, but the number of homes wasn't immediately known.

Officers went door-to-door in some areas telling residents to get out.

At least 75 people went to one emergency shelter at Niwot High School. Another shelter was set up at Centennial Middle School. Authorities said more than 11,000 homes had been alerted to the fire by reverse-911 calls, but not all of those households were told to leave.

The fires were burning in parched, rolling grasslands dotted with subdivisions, individual homes and horse ranches in unincorporated Boulder County about 25 miles northwest of Denver.

The largest fire, which burned more than 6,400 acres, jumped across U.S. 36 and entered the Lake Valley Estates neighborhood, where police went from house to house warning residents to get out. Also evacuated were Crestview Estates and Lake of the Pines. A perimeter of 9,600 acres was closed off to contain the fire.

Michelle of Lake Valley Estates had to evacuate and waited for news at Niwot High School. She said it was very hard to watch the flames on TV near here community.

"I'm choked up," Michelle said. "It's hard because we have friends up in Olde Stage and we have friends and family; and our home."

There were no immediate reports of houses burning there.

Two smaller fires were contained by early evening.

In the Dakota Ridge subdivision, 532 homes were evacuated from Lee Hill Road to Broadway.

Television video showed flames leaping across a highway and racing up a parched brown hillside. Glowing embers blew across a fire-blackened field like snow.

Flames licked the shoulders of one road as cars and pickups rolled by, some towing livestock trailers.

The area is home to a lot of ranches and many had to evacuate their horses. Colorado Horse Rescue and Animal Control raced to save what they could.

"We have a lot of horses. There are about 40 horses at Joder Arabian Ranch and as you can see the flames are right there … I think most of the horses are gone as far as we can tell," a woman said, meaning the horses had been rescued.

"It's really terrifying," said Pamela Taylor of nearby Louisville, who was trying to find out whether her horse Zorro had been moved from a boarding stable that stood in an evacuation area. "You just want to set eyes on him."

Heavy smoke partially obscured the mountains looming to the west, but smaller fires were visible on the slopes of the foothills.

Sheriff's Cmdr. Phil West said the fire apparently started when winds knocked down a power line.

Winds at the scene ranged from 35 to 55 mph, said Kyle Fredin, a National Weather Service spokesman. He said the winds had begun to back off but were still strong enough to make firefighting difficult.

"This is what scares everybody to death, these high winds," said John Stobbelaar, a retired captain with the Mountain View Fire District who went to one of the fires after he was called up on standby.

Authorities said at least three of the destroyed structures were homes, and the fourth was either a barn or a home.

At one blaze, firefighters were trying to save the buildings rather than contain the flames, West said.

"We're just doing structural protection and letting the grass burn," he said.

An emergency animal shelter at the Boulder County Fairgrounds in nearby Longmont was full, and an overflow shelter was set up at a ranch.

Small-animal shelters took in at least a dozen pets.

CBS4 staff contributed to this report.

Additional Resources

• Boulder County Government Wildfire Information

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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