Towers of smoke were slowly encircling Mountain Shadows Mobile Estates Monday afternoon. A few makeshift sprinklers worked furiously at the western edge of the mobile home community, but hard wind blew ash into scrubby yards.

Sandy Merrill paced outside her home while sister Joyce Johnson sat nearby, back to the blaze. Both had evacuated from a wildfire before, and they weren’t eager to repeat the experience.

“Sleeping on those cots was not exactly comfortable,” said Merrill.

Three hours later, the sisters were eating free pizza outside the emergency shelter at the Pueblo County Recreation Center, where they would be spending the night. The Aspen Acres fire had by then surged to almost 23,000 acres.

The fire was spotted early Monday morning burning at about 30 acres near the Aspen Acres subdivision, according to the Beulah Fire Protection and Ambulance District. By 9:15, the town of Beulah was ordered to evacuate. The communities of Rye and Colorado City followed in the afternoon. The fire outpaced its noon size estimate by a factor of 10 within hours, spreading a dark plume over Pueblo to the east.

The speed of the fire left some evacuees dazed. A few miles down the road from Mountain Shadows, Beulah residents Colleen Estes and Penny Leese were waiting in a mostly empty parking lot for another truck to transport Estes’ horse, Pretty Girl, to the county fairgrounds. The pair had not left their houses with much more than their cellphones. Estes turned her car off to save gas.

“I don’t know if my house is gone,” said Leese, a Beulah resident of 30 years. “I don’t know anything.”

Gerald Fern, an orange-shirted volunteer with the Pueblo Community Animal Response Team, was staying with Pretty Girl until transport could be found. “Scary” was his one-word descriptor of the day, which had started at about 7:30 a.m. as his team assisted large animal evacuations.

“This thing blew up quick,” he said.

The roadblock moved steadily back from the Mountain Shadows turnoff as bright red flames skated over the top of Signal Mountain. Ed Foster, towing his camping trailer, had stopped in the midst of bugging out to make sure an ambulance came for an elderly friend who lived in the community.

He speculated a faint pop in the distance might have been a propane tank.

“It’s getting closer,” he said.

As of Monday evening, much of Highway 78 was closed. Highway 165 was closed from Mackenzie Junction to Colorado City. Multiple unincorporated communities were evacuated, as was the historical landmark Bishop Castle. According to the Custer County Sheriff’s Office, an unknown number of structures have been lost. The fire has no containment and was expected to grow through the night.

Much of central Colorado was under red flag fire warnings Monday. The National Weather Service in Pueblo forecast winds from the west and southwest gusting 30 to 50 mph with low humidity. The warnings presaged major fire activity across the state. Similar conditions are predicted for Tuesday and Wednesday.

As evacuation areas expanded on Monday morning, the Pueblo County Sheriff, Custer County Sheriff and Rye fire chief turned over command of the Aspen Acres Fire to the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control.

Incident command was turned over from local resources to the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control on Monday. A Type 3 Incident Management Team should be in place by Monday night or Tuesday morning, according to the Custer County Sheriff’s Office. By Wednesday, the Aspen Acres fire response is expected to escalate to a Complex Incident Management Team, which is the largest type.

Since the last vehicle rolled out of Mountain Shadows, how that community and a handful of others have fared in the hours since is uncertain.

As of Monday night, there were no reported injuries.

An emergency shelter at 1650 Cooper Place in Pueblo is open for evacuees. Large animals are sheltering at the Pueblo County Fairgrounds, 1001 Beulah Ave. Field updates about the Aspen Acres fire are expected on a new official page.