DENVER -- Firefighters battling a wildfire Jefferson County misjudged how long it would take to reach nearby homes as flames raced toward the Pleasant Park area south of Conifer.
Radio traffic between firefighters and dispatchers released to 7NEWS Wednesday showed the confusion early in the March 26 wildfire blamed for three deaths.
Authorities apparently were unaware of either the speed of the fire or the proximity of houses once the fire spread beyond a drainage area that triggered an official call for evacuations.
A firefighter estimated that it would take about two hours before it hit homes. Authorities pressed for the estimate because they were also responding to another fire.
"We just want to make sure that we start getting people evacuated and get some structure protection going," an Inter-Canyon firefighter radioed to command.
Dispatch records show the first home burned about an hour after the evacuation call.
"Base 612, we're losing structures," a firefighter radioed at 5:32 p.m.
Dispatch confirmed the worsening situation between 5:38 and 5:50 p.m.
"The driveway's on fire there, they don't know to evacuate ? Residents don't know to evacuate and their driveway is on fire."
Firefighters were working with maps that were 18 years old and a fire lookout had to flee from the fire's path.
The situation among firefighters was still chaotic as late as 6 p.m. as an Inter-Canyon firefighter radioed, "We need to get some kind of a representative to the unified command, um because right now we're talking out here and we don't have anybody that's gonna kind of track of what is going on."
A short time later, another firefighter radioed dispatch, "We need to get him up there so we got a unified command going. Right now we got no representation up there and if the resources aren't starting to get distributed you know we may start losing a whole lot of houses on the end of the road."
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