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 set to be lifted at noon Wednesday, according to Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell. Initially, only residents will be allowed into the affected areas, Mikesell said. Checkpoints will be set up at county roads 51 and 511 (Ridge Road). Proof of residency will be required from noon until normal traffic is 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.

Tuesday’s updates

A frightful, human-caused fire, which started at a house in the middle of a subdivision in Divide Monday afternoon and quickly grew to the point of firefighters beating back flames from the backside of many homes, by 4:30 p.m. Tuesday had reached 60% containment, as 150 firefighters worked around the clock to best what had the potential to morph into a scary beast.

“We are taking this fire very seriously and have had some great gains,” Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said at the last of three media briefings on Tuesday.

Morning airdrops before winds started gusting to more than 50 mph as the day went on helped dampen the blaze’s progress, he said, as workers from a host of agencies used hand tools, bulldozers and graders to slash a fire line around what grew from burning nearly 100 acres overnight to 166 acres Tuesday in a heavily wooded and populated area near the historic Golden Bell Camp & Conference Center.

“They are saving your homes,” Mikesell said during a news briefing Monday night.

Officials lifted pre-evacuation orders for 650 homes in the Spring Valley, Aspen Moors and central Divide areas Tuesday evening, leaving mandatory evacuations for nearly 700 homes in place until Wednesday morning. Mikesell said officials hope to begin a gradual release of residents by 10 a.m. Wednesday in subdivisions beginning with Aspen Valley, Broken Wheel and others to return to their homes, depending on how the fire behaves Tuesday night.

“We’re still getting things kicking up that we’re concerned about,” he said. “There’s a lot of risk here. It’s a dangerous fire, and we’re treating it as such.”

Teller County officials announced at 1 p.m. Tuesday that containment of the Highland Lakes fire had reached 15%, after achieving 5% containment overnight. Mikesell attributed Tuesday’s expanded acreage primarily to firefighting efforts to slash a burn line.

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.

Highland Lakes fire: List of evacuation and pre-evacuation order areas

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.

Social media speculation points to a 76-year-old woman whose Highland Lakes house went into foreclosure. Some neighbors said she told them she was “cleaning up” and was burning cardboard on the site, where she had seemed to be squatting. The home appears to be the one that burned in a photo posted on social media, which shows it engulfed in flames.

Public records show American National Property and Casualty Company filed a temporary restraining last month against the woman after she allegedly made threats to burn down their office, shoot people and kill an employee and his family.

She traveled to both Texas and Missouri to confront employees, the paperwork states. The dispute allegedly arose over an insurance claim from December 2023, though it appears authorities were unable to recently serve the restraining order because they couldn’t locate her.

Mikesell said websites and Facebook pages from the Teller County Sheriff’s Office and county office are the official word.

“Please don’t listen to fake news on YouTube,” he said. “There’s a lot of rumors flying around; a lot of that is what we’d call hogwash.”

The fire began less than a mile from Belinda Binette’s house. She was driving home Monday when she found out her neighborhood was being evacuated. She and her roommate grabbed their two cats, important paperwork and treasures such as musical flutes and jewelry, fired up their camper and vehicles, and headed for the evacuation center at the Woodland Park Community Church.

About 10 people spent the night inside and more outside in their vehicles with their pets said an American Red Cross official working with the responding unit.

Small and large animals are temporarily being boarded at the Teller County Regional Animal Shelter in Divide or the Teller County Fairgrounds in Cripple Creek.

“It was pretty scary,” Binette said Tuesday. “The smoke was so thick, you could see the fire crews working. It was real. We got physically ill from the stress.”

No additional structures have been damaged, Mikesell said, and no additional people have been injured. Some were treated for smoke inhalation Monday, he said, who are normally firefighters. Although because the smoke was staying low to the ground, some residents’ health also was affected.

“In subdivisions you have houses fairly close together, and as fuel ignites, it can spread rapidly,” the sheriff said, adding that the area’s wildland task force was brought in immediately.

Highland Lakes fire: Road closures, shelter information

Tuesday’s response, weather

“This one concerns me because of the environment; this fire is aggressive, because of the cold conditions, it’s hard to fight,” Mikesell said Monday night.

On top of that, a red flag warning, meaning fire conditions are extreme, is in effect. Also, Teller County moved to a Stage 3 burn ban Monday — prohibiting all outdoor burning including cigarette smoking.

Monday saw 20 mph sustained winds; Tuesday’s forecast calls for up to 50 mph winds accompanying the dry conditions, Mikesell said.

“This is what I’m worried about,” he said. “We’re going to hit this extremely hard. Let’s pray there’s moisture behind it.”

Drier seasons have caused more intense fires and events that are occurring in areas that were not prime locations in the past, Mikesell said, such as subdivisions.

Snow is in the forecast for Teller County over the next few days, though, which could help further douse the Highland Lakes fire.

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.”

Road closures

Roads near the area are closed to the public: All of County Road 511 is inaccessible, and County Road 51 from County Road 5 to County Road 512 is closed.

Teller County commissioners declared the fire to be an emergency disaster Monday, which enables assistance from more agencies and more government funding to flow.

“This community is very resilient — we’ve been through more fires in the last eight years since I’ve been sheriff than most counties ever see,” Mikesell said.