‘Hundreds’ of homes destroyed in Colorado wildfire

The damage has not yet been fully tallied. Many of those who fled are sleeping in high school gymnasiums in the east of the city and still do not know if they will have a home to return to.

Aerial pictures appeared to show at least 300 homes destroyed in one small area. The city’s mayor confirmed yesterday morning that “hundreds” of homes had been hit but said exact figures were still not clear.

“We now know hundreds of homes have been destroyed. We are working through the process, which is very painstaking, of assessing every address to make sure that we have absolutely accurate information on each address,” said Steve Bach.

“The worst thing we could do would be to put out information that’s inaccurate.”

Meanwhile the FBI confirmed that it is looking into the possibility that the fire could be arson.

FBI Denver Division spokesman Dave Joly said: “The FBI Denver Division is working closely with local, state, and federal law enforcement to determine if any of the wild land fires resulted from criminal activity.”

The Waldo Canyon fire started on Saturday and had burned 24 square miles by Wednesday with only five per cent of the flames under control.

Rich Harvey, the incident commander, said that Wednesday “was a good day” in fighting the fire. “We are going to be incredibly aggressive” on Thursday, he added. “We expect that (containment) figure to jump dramatically.”

Firefighters are hoping that favourable conditions, specifically a lack of wind and possible rain, will stop the fire spreading any wider.

Previously Rich Brown, the Colorado fire chief, said the blaze was a “monster” which was “not remotely close to being contained”, adding: “This is a fire of epic proportions. This is an active fire. Please do not be deceived.”

John Hickenlooper, the governor of Colorado, described the scene as similar to “looking at the worst movie set you could imagine”.

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