Two people are missing after vicious wildfire wipes out entire subdivisions in a Colorado county

Judy Delaware’s family lost their Louisville home in the blaze, escaping the fast-moving fires with not much more than their dogs and the clothes on their backs, she told CNN Saturday.

“It was hard to even visualize and conceptualize that our whole neighborhood was destroyed,” she said. “We’ve lived there for so long.”

“But seeing it, it’s hard to believe when you look at your house, that that’s everything. And it just was a pile of rubble,” she said.

Authorities announced evacuation orders Thursday as the fire quickly made its way to suburban neighborhoods. Many of those areas remain blocked off because it’s “still too dangerous” for residents to return just yet, the sheriff said Friday.

“We saw still active fire in many places this morning, we saw downed power lines, we saw a lot of risk that we’re still trying to mitigate,” he said. “As soon as residents are able to get back, we’re going to let them back. That’s our goal.”

The Marshall Fire was one of two blazes that started Thursday morning. Fueled by historic winds, its flames sped across drought-parched land, traveling “down a football field in a matter of seconds,” Gov. Jared Polis described in a Thursday news conference.

The other fire, known as the Middle Fork Fire, was attacked quickly and “laid down,” the sheriff said.

Containment of the Marshall Fire remained at 0% Friday because fighting this blaze is different, the fire’s incident commander, Michael Smith, told reporters.

“This is about working around the perimeters of homes and working our way through the process,” he said. “We’re having to kind of change our thought process on what containment looks like,” he said.

But fire officials did not expect much more fire growth. Swinging to the other extreme just a day after the fires, a cold front pushing through the area dumped several inches of snow on Friday.

‘It was like a disaster movie’

Many of the residents in the fire’s path were caught off-guard by the evacuation orders, and the rush to leave was a chaotic one, as they scrambled to grab belongings and pets before fleeing.

“They were given immediate orders to evacuate,” Denver Fire Department spokesperson Capt. Greg Pixley told CNN on Friday. “People aren’t prepared for that.”

Resident Hunt Frye said he was shopping for soup for his wife at a Costco in Superior when a worker suddenly told customers to evacuate, sending them running. As he drove home, Frye watched a frenzied evacuation around him, describing it as “apocalyptic-feeling.”

“People were running from their houses with their pet cats and, you know, everybody was very panic-stricken,” he said. “The thing that really struck me was the fear in the police officers’ face(s) who were trying to kind of get traffic going. They were legitimately scared.”

Inside a Home Depot in Louisville, employee Julie Tanous watched in horror Thursday as winds whipped smoke and ash from the fire all around the store.

“It was like a disaster movie,” Tanous wrote to CNN. “Seriously. I shook for a few hours after getting home.”

While no deaths had been reported by Friday, several people were treated for injuries, authorities said.

“In this kind of situation you’d expect, honestly, dozens of fatalities,” Polis told CNN Friday evening. “These are thousands of people, many had five minutes to flee. It would be remarkable if there aren’t any (deaths).”

Cause of blaze is under investigation

The origin of the blaze is still under investigation, the sheriff said there were power lines down where the Marshall Fire started.

“The origin of the fire hasn’t been confirmed. It’s suspected to be power lines but we are investigating that today and we have folks on the ground as we speak trying to pinpoint that cause,” Pelle said.

But the Boulder Office of Emergency Management (OEM) said power company Xcel Energy “found no downed power lines.”

“Xcel Energy has been a very responsive and invaluable partner. At this point, they have inspected all of their lines within the ignition area and found no downed power lines,” Boulder OEM said in a news release.

“They did find some compromised communication lines that may have been misidentified as power lines. Typically, communications lines (telephone, cable, internet, etc.) would not be the cause of a fire,” the release added.

A full investigation is ongoing, it said.