As emergency responders sift through the debris left behind by the Marshall fire, two people have yet to be found, Boulder officials confirmed Saturday, despite officials’ earlier declarations that nobody was still missing in the wake of this week’s destructive wildfire.
Those early reports were incorrect, said Jennifer Churchill, a spokeswoman for the Boulder Office of Emergency Management, asking for “grace” after the error.
Many different agencies were working to extinguish hot spots, investigate the fire, keep people out of the evacuation area and more, she said, and the mixup stemmed from all those different people tackling everything at once.
“We thought we were at zero… but that was incorrect,” Churchill said. “Information is coming from multiple channels, we’re dealing with COVID… our communication channels were certainly stretched.”
While the fire tore through Superior and Louisville, hundreds of people initially were reported as missing, Churchill said. Firefighters, police, sheriff’s deputies and other emergency officials started to check each one off the list as they were found.