(Bloomberg) — Investigators tracked tips from the public Sunday into the cause of the devastating Boulder County, Colorado, wildfire after Xcel Energy Inc. found no evidence of downed power lines in the drought-parched grasslands at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s office obtained a search warrant for one property but Sheriff Joe Pelle said there was no credible evidence as of Saturday into the cause of the 6,215-acre wind-whipped blaze that destroyed 991 buildings and left two people missing and presumed dead.
A third person reported missing Saturday was located alive, The Denver Post reported.
Burned-out residents face a long haul toward rebuilding given “shortages of supplies and labor,” Governor Jared Polis said at a Sunday news conference in Boulder. Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, toured the fire zone Sunday, anticipating “a long road to recovery.”
Boulder County’s disaster is the latest triggered by extreme weather as climate change and a La Nina weather pattern leave much of the West in drought. “This was a horrific convergence of two things,” Polis said. “We had an unusually dry and warm winter” and “historic wind gusts.”
“We know that with the climate we face higher risks,” the governor said. “It’s a challenging issue across the American West.”
The wildfire mitigation plan for the area, 30 miles northwest of Denver, hadn’t been updated since 2010, predating a 17% increase in the local population, the Denver Gazette reported Sunday. The communities of Louisville and Superior suffered the greats losses.
(Adding governor’s news conference)
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