“We were looking to get away from the fires in the West, and I have asthma pretty badly. They plan to sell their vacant lot in Colorado. The Hickmans said they might be interested in joining litigation against Xcel Energy to try to recover costs, pointing to a California utility’s 2019 settlement for wildfire damages.įor now, the Hickmans have been settling into their new home in Charlottesville, Virginia, where they built a new home using insurance money. I guess I don’t know, it kind of leaves it open in my mind,” Rex Hickman said. “It doesn’t really provide any answers that help us. Hickman’s husband expressed frustration the fire’s cause wasn’t pinned down more definitively. It says witnesses saw a fire igniting near a power line in the area identified by investigators, with one witness videoing sparks flying from a malfunctioning power line and igniting a fire on the ground. The second-most destructive fire erupted in 2013 outside Colorado Springs, destroying 489 homes and killing two.Ī lawsuit filed against Colorado’s largest utility, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, alleged that sparks from a power line started the blaze. The fire, which spanned 9.4 square miles (24 square kilometers), ranks as the most destructive in state history in terms of homes and other structures destroyed and damaged. The area includes an abandoned coal field where two underground fires, fueled by coal deposits, have slowly burned over the years. Old coal mines that smoldered underground in the area could not be ruled out as playing a role in the fire, but were not deemed to be part of the cause, investigators said. Within hours, it destroyed 1,084 homes and seven commercial buildings, and damaged nearly 200 structures. Shifting winds caused the skies to turn from clear to smoky and then back again in an area filled with middle- and upper-middle class subdivisions surrounded by shopping centers, parks and schools.Īs smoke filled the parking lot of a Costco warehouse store and debris whirled around, a sheriff’s deputy ordered people inside to leave their carts, evacuate the sprawling building and head toward Denver, away from the fire. Thousands of residents were at home the day before New Year’s Eve and used the suburban area’s extensive road network to escape amid smoke, flames and blowing embers, which spread the fire in the wind.
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