SUPERIOR, Colo. (AP) — Hundreds of Colorado residents who had expected to ring in 2022 in their homes are instead starting off the new year trying to salvage what remains of them after a wind-whipped wildfire tore through the Denver suburbs.
Families forced to flee the flames with little warning returned to their neighborhoods Friday to find a patchwork of devastation. On some blocks, homes reduced to smoking ruins stood next to ones practically unscathed by the fires.
At least seven people were injured, but remarkably there have been no reports of any deaths or anyone missing in the wildfire that erupted Thursday in and around Louisville and Superior, neighboring towns about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Denver with a combined population of 34,000.
David Marks stood on a hillside overlooking Superior with others, using a pair of binoculars and a long-range camera lens to see if his house, and those of his neighbors, were still there, but he couldn’t tell for sure whether his place was OK. He said at least three friends lost their homes.
“By the time I got up here, the houses were completely engulfed,” he said. “I mean, it happened so quickly. I’ve never seen anything like that. … Just house after house, fences, just stuff flying through the air, just caught on fire.”
“We knew that the house was totaled, but I felt the need to see it, see what the rest of the neighborhood looked like,” he said. “We’re a very close knit community on this street. We all know each other and we all love each other. It’s hard to see this happen to all of us.”
Associated Press writer Thomas Peipert in Louisville, Colorado, and Thalia Beaty in New York contributed to this report. Nieberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Associated Press writer Brady McCombs contributed to this story from Salt Lake City.
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