Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated and nearly 1,000 homes have been destroyed as wildfires spread through the US state of Colorado.
The fast-moving blazes are burning in Boulder County, north of Denver. Governor Jared Polis called it a “New Year’s Eve miracle” that no deaths had been reported.
Some 30,000 people in the towns of Louisville and Superior were told to leave their homes on Thursday.
A state of emergency has been declared.
“It was in blink of an eye. This was a disaster in fast motion, all in the course of half a day,” Governor Polis said in a news conference on Friday.
“Nearly 1,000 homes are gone,” he added.
Winds of up to 105 mph (169 km/h) are fanning flames across the region amid a historic drought.
While previous fires in Colorado have been in rural areas, these latest blazes are burning in more suburban parts of the state. Thursday’s fires, named the Marshall Fire and Middle Fork Fire, are coming relatively late in the season.
At least some were sparked when power lines were toppled by strong winds, and they have quickly become the most destructive wildfires in the state’s modern history. Experts say that wildfires in western North America have grown more intense in recent years.
