BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — A new timeline from the Boulder County Sheriff's Office (BCSO) shows a little more than 24,000 cell phones and landlines received Marshall Fire evacuation alerts one week ago.
In most counties, including Boulder, people need to register their phones to get emergency notifications such as wildfire evacuation notices.
According to BCSO's timeline and map, the earliest alert was sent at 11:47 a.m. Dec. 30 to people just north and east of the origin of the fire near Highway 93 and Highway 170.
The next alerts were east and south of that area.
An area in South Superior around Rock Creek received an alert at 12:49 p.m. to prepare to leave. It was not an alert for a mandatory evacuation. Homes in that area were lost.
"As for the why an evacuation warning was sent, that was an on-the-ground tactical decision made in a very quickly moving incident," BCSO spokesperson Carrie Haverfield said. "We have not yet had a chance to conduct debriefs or after-action reviews to dive into every decision point, as we are still focusing on helping with recovery, the missing persons cases, and the fire investigation."
At 12:58 p.m., the Town of Superior tweeted there was an evacuation order for all residents.
According to Boulder County, an emergency alert was sent at 1:08 p.m. for residents in Louisville in Zones 5A and 5B on the map. Boulder County said two more areas west of the city and one area north of Louisville -- Zones 6A, 6B, and 7 -- were ordered to evacuate by 1:30 p.m.
The fire had jumped U.S. 36.
The Louisville Police Department tweeted at 2:24 p.m. that fire command had issued an order of evacuation for the city.
More than 25 minutes later, at 2:51 p.m., Boulder County said it sent out an emergency notification for the City of Louisville, including Zone 8, for people who registered a phone for an alert.
The Boulder County Sheriff's Office said it is working toward a location-based cell phone alert system, which is commonly used for weather warnings and Amber Alerts.
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