BOULDER — The Lefthand fire was 25 percent contained Friday night and has been declared “human caused” by U.S. Forest Service officials.
Officials hope to have 50 percent containment by this morning.
Mandatory evacuations were lifted early in the evening for 199 homes, including the Lake of the Pines neighborhood and subdivisions to the north.
The shelter at the Boulder YMCA closed at 8 p.m. Friday after serving dinner. Anyone needing basic necessities or a place to stay because of the fire can contact the Red Cross at 303-722-7474, officials said.
Residents allowed back home were being asked to watch news reports, however, and be ready to leave again on a moment’s notice.
“They still need to pay attention to what’s going on,” sheriff’s Cmdr. Rick Brough said.
The blaze has been declared human caused because it started in a popular recreation area and there was no lightning and no reports of downed power lines. However, the actual cause has not yet been determined.
The Lefthand fire had grown to 200 acres when an air tanker began making afternoon slurry drops over the blaze.
Fire officials planned to staff the fire Friday night and conduct burnout operations to contain the fire with a fire break along Lefthand Drive.
Twelve homes and six outbuildings were directly threatened by the fire, but there were no reports of damaged buildings or any injuries, Forest Service spokeswoman Maribeth Pecotte said.
The 100 firefighters from multiple agencies who were on the scene had been contending with high winds, which blew embers from the blaze.
“It’s jumping from ridge to ridge,” Brough said in the afternoon.
Wind conditions were expected to improve during the evening.
When firefighters were first called to the scene by people using the nearby shooting area, the blaze was between one-eighth and one-quarter of an acre, and it was slowly moving downhill. But the winds quickly changed that situation, Brough said.
The American Red Cross had opened an evacuation center at the YMCA, 2850 Mapleton Ave. in Boulder, at 1 p.m. The county had asked evacuees to check in there, even if they had other places to stay.
Bryan Ellis, who lives in the Lake of the Pines neighborhood, was at the shelter Friday afternoon.
Ellis said he was running errands in Boulder when he saw smoke rising near his neighborhood. He rushed home, picked up his dog and two cats, his computer and important documents, and then headed to the shelter.
Christa Preister, 35, another Lake of the Pines resident, arrived with her parrot, Jiggy, on her shoulder.
She said her fiance is in Mexico and also was evacuated from where he’s staying because of concerns about the tsunami caused by the quake off Japan’s coast.
