DIVIDE — The Teller County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday announced that the Highland Lakes fire, which is holding steady at 166 acres burned, is approximately 80% contained.

All residential evacuations were lifted at noon Wednesday, according to Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell. Initially, only residents were allowed into the affected areas, Mikesell said. Checkpoints were set up at county roads 51 and 511 (Ridge Road). Proof of residency was required from noon until normal traffic was allowed to resume at 4 p.m.

Pet owners who dropped off their pets at the designated holding areas are asked to pick them up before going to their homes.

“It wasn’t really a big fire, but it had so much potential,” Mikesell said, explaining the aggressive approach to the blaze. “We hit it with everything that we could muster.”

Winds picked up Tuesday afternoon, forcing state and federal agencies to withdraw air support, the sheriff said.

“Everything after that was all manpower (on the ground),” he said.

Divide Fire Protection District Chief J.T. McLeod praised the efforts of the local firefighters, about 80% of whom are volunteers.

“We went from initial attack to a Type 3 incident management team, back to where it’s under county control, in less than 72 hours,” McLeod said. “That’s pretty amazing.”

About 30 firefighters were still on the ground as of Wednesday morning, checking the area for hot spots and ensuring that the containment holds, the fire chief said.

“We’re pretty confident in our containment,” he said.

McLeod also lauded the efforts of local volunteers and residents, who donated food and materials and offered support throughout the incident.

“I love how, when something like this happens, our boundaries just kind of fade away, and everybody gets in here (to help),” he said. “We can’t say enough about what the community has done for us.”

Mikesell said investigators are looking at the incident as a criminal case, but did not name a suspect or speculate on the charges. The fire is believed to have been caused by a human, he said.

 

The sheriff called the large and quick response “aggressive” because of “such high winds and a possibility of growing exponentially.”

Many of the firefighters live in the region and were evacuated, Mikesell said, so their heart was in their work.

Evacuated homes represented $300 million in value, and more than 2,000 people were displaced, he said.

One home has been destroyed, presumably where the fire originated, but since the case is being investigated as a crime scene with potential criminal charges pending, Mikesell said the address is not being released. It is in the Highland Lakes subdivision, and the Teller County Sheriff’s Office is working with the 4th Judicial District’s Office on investigating the scene, along with state fire prevention teams.

“We’re still in the investigative stages, how it burned, why it burned, what happened,” the sheriff said. “We can’t formulate what caused the fire or how it started.”

Officials, however, confirmed the fire started as a structure fire and not as a wildfire.

Evacuations

Traffic on roads out of Divide Monday night were “bumper-to-bumper,” as evacuees scrambled to exit the rural area, where there’s often just one road in and one road out.

Between 60 and 100 evacuees were escorted back into their homes Tuesday to retrieve necessary items they left behind when leaving their houses Monday, such as medications, Mikesell said.

A swath has been designated to allow permitted hunters to hunt on the land, according to the sheriff. And the county’s strict fire ban does not include hunters.

Hunting does not usually cause a fire, he said at Tuesday’s 1 p.m. briefing. “We didn’t want to have hunters that are legally hunting be cut off from something they paid for,” he said, “so we’re allowing hunting in the backcountry of Teller County.”

A hunting trip for the Gavitt family from Wisconsin turned from good to bad on Monday, when they returned from a dry run of hunting elk in the Pike National Forest in Divide to discover that they couldn’t go back to their vacation rental home to retrieve anything.

So they spent the night at a motel in Woodland Park with their hunting clothes and that’s about it. Some of the 11-member group appeared at a briefing Tuesday to find out what was going on and whether they can get their camper, vehicles, identification and other important materials to ensure they can get back home.

“In the morning it was paradise; at night it was hell,” said the Gavitt family matriarch, who declined to give her first name.

What a story for the vacationers!

“What a mess,” replied the Gavitt patriarch, who also did not want his first name used. “We’ve never been evacuated before.”