312- acre Lefthand Canyon fire forces evacuations

A second wildfire broke out in Boulder County on Sunday, forcing new evacuations in and around Ward.

The Lefthand Canyon fire burned at least 312 acres as of Sunday evening after starting near the 14000 block of Lefthand Canyon Drive Sunday.

Homes in Ward, north of Ward and the Gold Hill area and in Sunshine Canyon were ordered to evacuate Sunday.

Fire personnel were able to hit the fire with an air attack “pretty hard,” Mike Wagner, division chief with the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, said in a Sunday evening briefing.

The fire was contained north of Lefthand Canyon on Sunday, but there was no estimate on overall containment or if any structures were lost, Wagner said.

The evacuation point for the Lefthand Canyon fire was the Nederland Community Center located at 750 CO- 72.

Livestock can be housed at the Gilpin County Fairground at 230 Norton Drive in Black Hawk.

About 145 residences were ordered to evacuate, according to the Boulder Office of Emergency Management.

Evacuation alerts were erroneously sent to some residents in some areas that are not close to the fire, including in Longmont and Louisville, the office said. Those not in the immediate vicinity of the fire did not need to evacuate.

“We use ( the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) to send out alerts because phone lines go down and power outages occur,” the office said in a statement. “We apologize for any confusion or panic that the alerts caused. We are doing our best to get out information to as many people as possible but unfortunately the system didn’t work perfectly.”

The office later clarified in a statement that some third- party alert systems, such as Amazon Alexa, sent out notifications to all of Boulder County, instead of just the evacuation areas, because of an issue in the code.

The fire was reported shortly before 1 p. m. and had been “pushing uphill” because of heavy winds, the Daily Camera reported.