The most destructive wildfire in Colorado history started in two places — on the grounds of an international religious cult and from a broken power line about 2,000 feet away, Boulder County Sheriff Curtis Johnson said Thursday, announcing the results of a 17-month investigation into the origin of the Marshall fire.
Embers from a fire that was thought to have been extinguished a week earlier on the Twelve Tribes‘ property at 5325 Eldorado Springs Drive reignited under high winds and began the Marshall fire on Dec. 30, 2021, Johnson said. About an hour later, hot particles sparking from a broken Xcel Energy electrical distribution system ignited a second blaze, he said.
“The two fires became one at some point,” Johnson said during a news conference in Boulder.
Johnson and Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty spent more than an hour Thursday morning laying out details of their investigation and how Dougherty came to the conclusion that no criminal charges would be filed in connection with the deadly Dec. 30, 2021, wildfire.
Investigators found no evidence that members of the Twelve Tribes intended to start the Marshall fire or that Xcel Energy was negligent in maintaining its equipment, Dougherty said.
“This fire was terribly destructive and traumatic for so many people,” Dougherty said “We make our decisions about filing criminal charges based on evidence and not based on emotion.”
While no criminal charges will be filed, the reports detailing the Marshall fire investigation released on Thursday will become central to pending litigation over the wildfire’s origin.
Over the past 17 months, the sheriff and district attorney investigators consulted with U.S. Forest Service fire investigators, experts on underground coal seams, and electrical engineers. They used drones, thermal imagery and grid searches to comb the area near Colorado 93 and Eldorado Springs Road for evidence. They also interviewed dozens of witnesses, watched hours of video footage and analyzed pictures and burn patterns to reach their conclusions.
Still, Xcel Energy disputed the investigation’s findings.
Xcel spokeswoman Michelle Aguayo denied that the company’s equipment started the fire and called the sheriff’s investigation “flawed” and “incorrect.”
“We strongly disagree with any suggestion that Xcel Energy’s power lines caused the second ignition, which according to the report started 80 to 110 feet away from Xcel Energy’s power lines in an area with underground coal fire activity,” Aguayo said in a statement.
Twelve Tribes members called the fire a terrible tragedy but declined to speak at length about the investigation’s findings.
Aaron Chase, who was at the compound on Thursday and identified himself as a Twelve Tribes member and a homeowner, told The Denver Post the group had little to say about the investigation other than members were appreciative of the sheriff’s and district attorney’s work.
“It’s been a difficult time for everybody here and we’re looking forward to moving on,” Chase said.
Investigators also had looked at the possibility that an underground coal seam that has burned for nearly a century under Marshall Mesa somehow ignited the fire, but Johnson said Thursday that the coal seam almost certainly did not contribute to the fire’s ignition.
The Marshall fire was the most costly in Colorado history, destroying more than $2 billion in property. Two people — Robert Sharpe, 69, and Nadine Turnbull, 91 — died in the wildfire, some 35,000 residents fled the flames, and more than 1,000 homes and businesses were destroyed in Superior, Louisville and unincorporated Boulder County.
The fire was powered by wind gusts that peaked at 115 mph and grass and brush that had grown thick and tall during a wet spring but had become incredibly dry after a summer and fall drought. Global warming exacerbates those dry conditions in the American West, and as a result of climate change, wildfire seasons are becoming longer and the blazes are increasing in their intensity, scientists say.
The wind was so strong that flames did what was thought to be impossible — jump all six lanes of U.S. 36.
Ultimately, though, the fire’s origins began on Christmas Eve 2021.
Twelve Tribes’ ignition point
On that cool and rainy day, a leader at the Twelve Tribes’ compound on Eldorado Springs Drive started a large fire in a sunken pit on the property in order to burn debris, scrap wood and trash.
A concerned passerby saw the tall flames and alerted authorities to the blaze just before noon that day, The Denver Post first reported last year.
Members of Mountain View Fire Rescue, a sheriff’s deputy and Boulder County park rangers responded to the compound and decided that the fire was not causing a danger or violating any laws or regulations, official reports show. They warned the man who started the fire that he needed to get a burn permit in the future, a Boulder County Sheriff’s Office report said.
A sheriff’s deputy noted that it was lightly raining at the time, according to reports released Thursday. There also was a large above-ground pool nearby that could be used to extinguish the fire if necessary.
A Twelve Tribes leader then let the fire burn until about 5 p.m., when it was reduced to embers. The man covered the embers with about a foot of dirt, he later told investigators. The man discussed covering the fire with dirt to extinguish it with the firefighters, and they’d approved of that method, Johnson said.
The man told investigators he did not see any smoke from the fire for the next week.
But on Dec. 30, 2021, high winds reignited the covered embers, and blew the fire through an unkept garden on the property and into at least two buildings before pushing the fire east from the compound, a group of houses where at least 40 people — about half children — lived, police reports show.
The police reports detail the chaotic early minutes as the fire began around 11 a.m. Three Twelve Tribes members and at least one neighbor tried to put out the flames before, during and after firefighters responded, according to the reports.
The men used both heavy equipment to try to push dirt on the fire as it spread through wood chips and debris in the garden and attempted to use hoses and a sprinkler to try to put out flames with water. One man stomped on embers to extinguish them. Another group member was thrown against the pool by strong winds and broke his arm during the effort, according to the reports.
Inside, the group’s women gathered the children together in one room and “distracted all the children by singing and praying,” a witness told investigators. The women and children then tried to eat lunch and “waited for the men to tell them what to do,” another witness told investigators.
They were forced to evacuate mid-meal, leaving trays of uneaten food on the table.
The Twelve Tribes is an insular religious group with about 3,000 members worldwide and two Colorado outposts. In the wake of the wildfire, former members described to The Post a manipulative cult that seeks to control followers; requires excessive corporal punishment and fails to protect children from sexual abuse; exploits members for labor and money; and espouses racist, misogynistic and homophobic teachings.
Police reports show that the Twelve Tribes’ members cooperated with investigators after the Marshall fire. The leader who started the Dec. 24 fire met multiple times with investigators, once to specifically describe his role in the earlier trash fire because, he said, it had been “weighing on his mind.”
The day after the Marshall fire, as a blizzard moved into the area, investigators measured the temperature of the sunken fire pit and found it to be 300 degrees, police reports show.
None of the Twelve Tribes members expected that smoldering embers from that fire would re-ignite six days later, Dougherty said. The sheriff’s office consulted with experts at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana and learned that embers buried underground can smolder for weeks, even months, allowing the powerful winds to blow away dirt and expose the smoldering debris.
In the days after the fire, video footage of a burning shed on the Twelve Tribes property made the rounds on social media as people speculated about the fire’s origin. But Johnson said the shed was not on fire when firefighters first arrived on the scene on Dec. 30.
“That shed was initially investigated as a potential location for where that fire started,” the sheriff said. “But after our investigators exhumed and recreated the remains of that shed, we learned there was no electrical service to the shed and no indication the fire started at that location.”
Chase said he was not at the compound on Dec. 24 or 30, 2021, and could not speak to the origins. He also declined to comment on any future litigation. A leader in the group who does not live locally, Tim Pendergrass, also declined to comment at length about the investigation.
“All I can say is it’s a terrible tragedy,” Pendergrass said.
Xcel’s ignition point
Investigators traced the second ignition point to an Xcel Energy electrical power distribution system near the Marshall Mesa trailhead, which is near the Twelve Tribes compound on Eldorado Springs Drive. That fire ignited around 12:20 p.m., Johnson said.
The sheriff’s office determined the power lines were a potential source a few days after the fire when they reviewed video from a motion-activated trail camera and noticed a power line sagging in the footage. They hired Jensen Hughes, an international electrical engineering firm with expertise in electrical fires, as consultants.
The Jensen Hughes report describes an analysis of Xcel’s power system and how energy was flowing through conductors and wires on the morning of the fire. A conductor had come loose and its lashing wires had touched other pieces of the system. The conductor and wire showed evidence of electrical arcing, which could spark a fire, the report said.
Photos and video from that day showed the conductor “was bouncing and moving in a dramatic way,” the report said.
The sheriff and district attorney displayed a picture of a wire with a chunk missing and said it was entirely possible a piece of metal still hot from surging electricity could have blown far enough into dry grass to start a fire.
“It appears the extraordinary high winds on Dec. 30 caused the power line to disconnect and then touch other lines, which caused sparking and hot particles to be released into a bed of receptive fuel — the dry grass,” Dougherty said.
Investigators believe those hot pieces of metal were blown 79 feet and 110 feet by the wind, Dougherty said.
The sheriff’s office also interviewed a construction worker who had video footage of flames that he took with his cellphone after parking at Marshall Mesa because Colorado 93 was closed to traffic. That footage also shows the Xcel line drooping and twisting in the wind, according to a U.S. Forest Service report on the fire.
Aguayo’s statement on behalf of Xcel said the company “did not have the opportunity to review and comment on the analyses relied on by the Sheriff’s Office and believes those analyses are flawed and their conclusions are incorrect. We have reviewed our maintenance records and believe the system was properly maintained.”
However, the Jensen Hughes report includes comments on an Xcel Energy presentation to investigators and says the company is ignoring evidence of arcing and disregarding the behavior of one circuit breaker designed to override the system during malfunctions.
The report stated that Xcel could have changed settings on its circuit breaker in anticipation of the strong wind advisory to reduce the probability of a fire starting. California utility companies use temporary revisions on their systems and utilities in other states are considering it, the report said. However, there are no industry standards and no definitive guidance exists to help utility companies develop strategies during high-fire-risk periods.
Investigators said Xcel had maintained its equipment and they did not find evidence that shoddy work was responsible for the fire.
As for the possibility of embers from the Twelve Tribes property reaching the Marshall Mesa trailhead and starting that ignition point, Johnson said it was highly unlikely that burning embers would have blown 2,000 feet against the wind into brush around the trail.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, investigators looked to power lines as a potential cause, but did not see immediate evidence that was the case. Instead, one downed line that had been identified turned out to be used for telecommunications and would not have generated enough voltage to ignite a fire, multiple investigative reports said.
By the time sheriff’s investigators decided to inspect the Xcel system at Marshall Mesa, the power lines had been repaired. The sheriff’s report indicates investigators originally suspected Xcel might be trying to interfere with their work, but later concluded the company was following county guidance to restore electricity as soon as possible as freezing temperatures and snow moved into the area.
Still, Dougherty said communication between Xcel and the county could have been better, citing an early Boulder County Emergency Operations tweet that called Xcel a “very responsive and invaluable partner” and that no downed power lines caused the fire.
That technically was true, Dougherty said, because Xcel only considers a power line to be “downed” when it is touching the ground. The line in question on Dec. 30 was “unmoored,” or “a floater,” under the power company’s terminology, he said. But he wanted to make sure Xcel was not intentionally misleading investigators.
“Speaking candidly, I’ll just say communication could have been more clear on both sides,” Dougherty said.
Fire fallout continues
About 85% of all wildfires are caused by humans through burning debris, equipment malfunction, cigarettes, campfires and arson, according to the National Park Service.
Too often, investigators never determine a cause, Johnson said. He was determined that Boulder County would identify this fire’s cause.
“We wanted to make sure we found one,” he told The Post after the news conference.
Already the investigation has led Boulder County’s Board of County Commissioners to change its fire ordinance to more specifically say that outdoor fires should be extinguished with water and dirt, not just dirt.
Thursday’s report brings a partial conclusion to the Marshall fire’s impact. But the community is still rebuilding homes in Louisville, Superior and unincorporated areas where the wildfire raged.
And an onslaught of civil lawsuits is expected in the wake of the sheriff’s investigation.
At least one lawsuit already has been filed against Xcel and more are expected. On Saturday, a group of law firms is hosting a town hall meeting to talk about fire victims’ legal options.
News about the investigation’s findings also triggered emotions from those who lost their homes.
Sheriff Johnson, whose family home was destroyed, repeatedly choked up during his presentation as he talked about the losses. And people posting on a Marshall fire Facebook group said the conclusion on the cause hadn’t brought as much relief as they expected.
Ashley Stolzmann, a Boulder County commissioner who was Louisville’s mayor during the fire, said she thought about the victims as the sheriff and the district attorney explained the fire’s cause. She hoped it brought relief, but knew it would also be upsetting.
“This is going to hit people in lots of different ways,” she said.
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