An early morning fire tore through a shopping center in Nederland on Thursday, leveling a Boulder County sheriff’s substation and torching at least 15 businesses including a children’s nature center and a popular brewery.
No injuries were reported in the fire, which broke out about 3:30 a.m. in the Caribou Village Shopping Center and sent flames 20 feet in the air. The fire had been “knocked down substantially” by 5:50 a.m., the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office said. It’s not yet clear what caused the fire.
Among other businesses destroyed were a music shop, laundromat and a yoga studio.
Evacuation orders were also issued for multiple neighborhoods surrounding the two-story Caribou Village Shopping Center, which lies on the Peak to Peak Highway, or State Highway 119, in the center of town. The orders were lifted just before 10 a.m.
The Carousel of Happiness, Train Cars Coffee and B&F Grocery are still standing.
Kallea Cohen, who lives near the Nederland Community Center on the opposite side of town from the fire, said she was awakened by what sounded like an explosion sometime before 4:30 a.m. “I thought it might be fireworks or something, maybe someone shooting off a loud gun.”
Billy Giblin, Nederland mayor, was out of town when the fire started. Giblin’s wife, Zoe, who lives in Old Town directly across from the fire, heard about the fire around 7 a.m. “I am in shock,” she said.
Jen Karowe, who lives in Big Springs and owns Hub Ned, a co-working space across the street from the plaza, said her family received an emergency alert at around 5 a.m. and went to the community center where around 15 people had gathered. She said her family has returned home and that smoke is moving away from Big Springs toward Barker Reservoir. “The loss of businesses to the community is devastating,” she said.
“We are absolutely devastated by the fire that took out about 20 businesses today, including ours,” Doug Armitage, owner of Brightwood Music, wrote on the Facebook page Nedheads.
“I am so sorry…I loved your store…my family and I bought several instruments from you,” Lisa Moyers, a resident of Arvada, responded to the loss of Brightwood Music.
Barbara Hardt, Armitage’s wife and managing editor of Nederland’s Mountain-Ear Newspaper, said she heard about the fire at around 4 a.m. while driving to Nederland from her home in Gilpin County. “I came over the hill and saw the whole top of the shopping center ablaze,” she said.
Brightwood burned quickly because it was filled with wooden instruments, she said. All were lost, including a 100-year-old violin Armitage owned that Hardt said several of the shop’s violins were modeled after. “He had one guitar at home,” she said. “He lost his personal bass and mandolin.” The two were in the process of moving the business to a new location across the street in three weeks. Hardt said she doesn’t know how much her insurance will cover. A pastor from Calvary Chapel prayed with her, for a good outcome with insurance.
Dawn Baumhover, manager of the Nederland Community Center, said the community center, Nederland food pantry, Calvary Chapel and Knotted Root brewery are all open for people “to gather, grab a bagel or muffin, and just be together.”
Reba Mitchell, who worked at Wild Bear Nature Center over a span of 15 years said the loss of the Arthropod Zoo and other exhibits will be a deep loss for the community that has sent children there for classes and workshops over the past 20 years.
Several other animals are thought to have burned in the fire. Among them were a 45-year-old turtle, Westie, who founder Jill Dreves said “used to do yoga for people,” a snake, Luna, salamanders Sal and Sally, a scorpion, Vinny, and several cockroaches and crickets.
“The whole Wild Bear vision and everything Jill Dreves built is within that space,” Mitchell said. “The only positive is that the new nature center is being built and is almost completed.”
Fire crews were still on the scene at 1:30 p.m.
Charlie Schmidtmann, Nederland Fire Protection District Chief, said the blaze took three hours to contain because it was extremely hot.
“Getting close to it before water would steam or evaporate was a serious challenge,” he said. Nederland also has “a small water supply for a town of this size, and it’s not ready to dish out the hundreds of thousands of gallons we needed to use to put this fire out.”
“The town does a great job with the water supply it has … with cisterns all over the place,” he added. “But they had to come in to move valves to more sources so we had more water to fight fire, because we drained some of their resources down to the point that they were dry. We didn’t run out of water. But we ran one of the tanks dry.”
Jonathan Cain, Nederland town administrator, said the cause of the fire is unknown and no fatalities are suspected. Schmidtmann said crews have not been able to go inside the building yet, due to structural damage. The Bureau of Tobacco, Alcohol, Firearms and Explosives is conducting an investigation. Giblin said the town attorney emailed an emergency declaration to the Boulder County Clerk and Recorder and Colorado Division of Emergency Management.
“The town did a great job, they were right on it, but there’s only so much they can give,” Schmidtmann said. “They’re not really ready for a fire of this magnitude. This is a huge, huge fire for a town like this.”
This is a breaking news story that will be updated
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