At least one area of more than 6 km2 was engulfed by flames in Boulder County.
Hundreds of homes may have been ravaged by aggressive wildfires in Colorado, the western United States, the Boulder County Sheriff said Thursday, where flames are raging, fueled by a historic drought.
“We know that approximately 370 houses in the Sagamore subdivision were lost. There are 210 other houses that may have been lost in Old Town Superior, ”Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle told a news conference.
At least an area of more than 6 km2 was engulfed by flames in Boulder County, where authorities warn of a lethal situation as the fire is advancing in inhabited and commercial areas.
“I want to emphasize that due to the magnitude and intensity of this fire and it occurs in a highly populated area, it would not be surprising if there are injuries or deaths,” said Pelle, who specified that a department store and a hotel complex were consumed by the calls.
The Colorado Sun newspaper reported that several injured with burns have been treated in hospitals in the area, registering at least six patients in a single hospital.
Images from CBS television show what appears to be a burning apartment complex as firefighters try to put out the fire.
A video on Twitter shows smoke and fire reaching a department store parking lot and setting trees and grass ablaze.
Thousands of people received an evacuation alert to flee the flames believed to have been unleashed by power poles collapsed by high winds.
Patrick Kilbride, 72, was working in a hardware store when he learned of the evacuation order, according to the Denver Post.
She ran home to pick up her things but couldn’t save anything but her car and the clothes she was wearing. His dog and cat died.
“Just ashes,” he said of the home in which he lived for three decades.
“It is no longer a house. If you need a fireplace, that’s all that remains, “he told the newspaper. “What a strange feeling to go from having everything to make your life comfortable to having nothing,” he added.
The National Meteorological Service affirmed that it is a situation “that is putting lives in danger.”
Patti Holtz described the terror of leaving her home in Boulder County.
“Everything was on fire,” he said.
“There are embers everywhere. So I’m very scared, of course, with the wind, which is going to continue to spread to other houses. (…) It was so dark, of course, that you can’t see anything. It is like the black of the night ”, he described.
Winds of about 160 kilometers per hour were reported in several places, fanning the flames and hindering the effort of firefighters who cannot fly over the region.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis declared a state of emergency, calling it a “devastating” fire.
Like previous fires in the state, he said, this one is advancing in residential areas and not in the countryside.
“This area [en llamas] it’s around and inside suburban settlements, shops, ”he said.
“It’s like the neighborhood you live in, like the neighborhood any of us live in, and 6km2 near a population center can be, and is, in this case, absolutely devastating,” said Polis, also present at the Press conference.
Like much of the western United States, Colorado experienced years of drought that has left the area parched and vulnerable to wildfires.
Although fires are a natural part of the climate cycle, helping to clear vegetation, their scale and intensity is increasing.
Scientists warn that climate change, largely driven by human activities such as the indiscriminate burning of fossil fuels, is altering weather patterns.
This prolongs droughts in several areas and causes unusual out-of-season storms in other regions, a phenomenon that is expected to worsen as temperatures around the world continue to rise.
Daniel Swain, a meteorologist at the University of California, tweeted that it was “hard to believe” that these fires were occurring in December, when these types of flames rarely register.
“But if we take a warm and dry autumn, with only 2.5 cm of snow so far this season, and add an extreme windstorm (over 160 km / h) … the result is extremely fast fires. and dangerous ”. (I)
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