A Kiwi living in the US state of Colorado has described the "chaos" as wildfires tore through the area and destroyed hundreds of homes.
Fires erupted on Thursday (local time) and winds of up to 170km/h fanned flames across the region amid a historic drought. Tens of thousands of residents were forced to evacuate and nearly 1000 homes were destroyed.
Kiwi Hana Caruso, who lives on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado, was working from home and sitting at her desk when she saw what she believed was a dust storm happening just 200 metres away in a ravine.
"I saw people gathering on the trail in front of me and so I was distracted. It was then I stopped mid-sentence [as I was speaking in a Zoom meeting] because I saw flames," she tells Newshub.
"I remember I put my hand over my heart and gasped - I just froze. My boss said, 'What's wrong' - all I could say was 'fire'.
"I stood up to get a better look and then frantically looked around my house while standing in one spot at all of my things thinking, 'What am I supposed to take?'"
Caruso heard firetrucks coming while she was packing to leave, and was worried about how she was going to take her two cats with her.
"I just remember thinking, 'F**k, is this happening again?' I lost my childhood home to the Fourmile Canyon Fire in 2010 - three days after the September earthquake in Christchurch where I was living at the time," she says.
As she waited for firefighters to arrive, Caruso says she hadn't realised in the 10 minutes since she'd seen flames that other fires had started, including the Middle Fork Fire less than 5km north of her and the "horrific" Marshall Fire about 7km southeast.
Middle Fork Fire was reported just before 10:30am near the intersection of North Foothills Highway and Middle Fork Road. Boulder Office of Emergency Management says this fire was contained later in the day, but the Marshall Fire, reported just after 11am at South Foothills Highway and Marshall Road, grew exponentially due to extreme wind conditions.
Caruso says this meant firefighters were scrambling and there wasn't any time to warn residents.
"They were inundated in a matter of minutes and eerily, the only way others and I knew to leave was when the Office of Emergency Management posted: 'There's no time - if you see flames, evacuate.'"
It took firefighters about an hour to contain the fire in front of her home, Caruso says. Then they worked to fight the Middle Fork blaze but at that point "had no idea how quickly the Marshall Fire would expand".
"Unfortunately, it was on the east side of the highway - my house is on the west, against the mountains - and to the east is pure suburbia expanding for miles until you hit Denver. Just a perfect storm of flat, dry plains with literally nothing to stop the fire," Caruso says.
"That's when chaos began. Think of mature, perfect tree-lined streets, family neighbourhoods with kids being able to play in their yards, supermarkets and shopping centres like Westfield - completely burned to the ground. The winds were so intense that the fires ate up more ground than a rugby field in a matter of seconds. There was literally no time.
"People were at work so many of their animals were stuck at home. Locked inside. It's absolutely horrific. It was apocalyptic. Mixed with the wind toppling over semis, the smoke in the middle of a perfectly clear, sunny day and idyllic neighbourhoods burnt to nothing."
Caruso says two different close friends and their families only barely got out of their homes alive. One of her friends managed to get her two children, their dog, and birth certificates before flames engulfed their home.
"We don't know about the other friend yet and unfortunately many people are away for the holidays and their pets were locked inside. We have search parties doing as we can to help but there is very low morale and at the same time everyone is coming together," Caruso says.
"The main hospital had to be evacuated and yesterday held the highest record of COVID cases in Colorado ever. To have all these displaced families in small buildings right now, who knows what will happen."
Colorado Governor Jared Polis said in a press conference on Friday that it was a "New Year's Eve miracle" that no deaths had been reported from the blazes.
"It was in the blink of an eye. This was a disaster in fast motion, all in the course of half a day," he said.
"Nearly 1000 homes are gone.
"This is our community so to watch it burn so quickly, so unexpectedly, is something that we are struggling to understand."
Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said on Friday about 6000 acres were burned in total, and a hotel was among the hundreds of buildings destroyed.
