LOUISVILLE, Colo. — West Metro Fire was one of dozens of agencies that sent help to Boulder County to save homes during the Marshall Fire.
Captain Dan Wenger and firefighter Mike Worcester were part of that crew. They remember arriving in the Louisville area around 2 p.m. on Dec. 30.
"Once we got our assignment and headed into the town of Louisville, we very quickly started seeing buildings of all types on fire," Wenger said.
The neighborhood they tried to protect for hours surrounded Fireside Elementary School, which is just south of Harper Lake.
It became apparent to them that this call wasn't just a grass fire anymore.
"You walk up to that house, and it is too hot, so you move to the next house," Worcester said. "And that one is going to catch fire. So you move to the next house and try and do something."
>> Video below: West Metro firefighters share video of what it was like, fighting the Marshall Fire
The first street they arrived to had more than a dozen homes burning at one time. Their strategy was to look for where they could stop the situation from getting worse.
"I remember standing on that first street and thinking 'I don't know how far this is going to go,'" Worcester said. "Like we are going to do this all night long, and you kind of feel hopeless at that point."
Worcester predicts it took a house less than 10 minutes to catch fire if the home next to it was in flames. That is how fast the Marshall Fire tore through neighborhoods in Boulder County.
Firefighters used every tool they could to stop the spread. Some homeowners laid out their garden hoses for crews to use. It helped them put out fires on decks, fences, trees and vegetation.
"Not only were people leaving their hoses, we also had some neighbors who were fighting fires at their neighbors' houses, which is incredible," Worcester said.
According to Worcester and Wenger, they felt the winds shift around 7:30 p.m., which allowed the fire to blow back toward properties it had already burned down.
"One of the hardest things was watching, like, playground structures in the backyard as the fire would move through the backyard," Wenger said. "Both [Worcester] and I are parents. We have kids, and trying to understand what the next day was going to be like for these families was one of the harder things to deal with."
Their crew of firefighters from several agencies was responsible for 384 homes in this Louisville neighborhood. West Metro Fire said 322 homes were saved and 62 were lost.
"I know there were quite a few neighborhoods that weren't as lucky as we were," Wenger said.
"It feels really weird to say that," Worcester said. "We only lost 62 homes. Like, that is not something the average person goes, 'oh yeah, we did pretty good.'"
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