Small wildfire forces evacuation of NCAR in Boulder

A small wildfire started late Friday morning in an open space area near the National Center for Atmospheric Research office in Boulder. The fire isn't threatening any structures, but the NSF NCAR Mesa Lab campus was evacuated as a precaution.

Emergency managers named the fire the Dinosaur Fire and said it is burning near the Mallory Cave Trail. It was estimated at approximately 3 acres a few hours after it started.

There is no official containment on the fire as of Friday night but the smoke is way down and firefighters are working on the ground laboring to cut in lines in the blistering heat. No further water drops are possible after dark, so helicopter activity has ceased.

Multiple Colorado fire and police agencies responded to the fire. Several air resources were called in, and a helicopter was making drops on the blaze just before 1 p.m.

The fire is located in the southwestern part of the city of Boulder, which is in the far northwestern corner of the Denver metro area. Officials described it as a "slow-moving" fire, and the Boulder Police Department tweeted "The #DinosaurFire is not behaving in a way that is a cause for evacuation concerns at this time."

"It's pretty far down the hill. We're not concerned at this point unless something changes with the wind direction about any encroachment onto structures, homes, commercial structures, anything like that," said Rick Tillery, the public information officer for Mountain View Fire Rescue.

Fortunately the wind had settled down, which aided firefighters.

"The best thing about big high pressure high every day is very little wind. So it's hot, it's dry so fuels are available to burn but we're not getting that wind pushing things around," said Brian Oliver, Boulder Fire Rescue's incident commander.

But it was tough to fight said Oliver.

"As you can see it's really steep and rugged. The Flatirons are known for that steepness and their rocky cragginess. There's a lot of fuel there," he said. "There's not a lot of fire history up in that particular spot so there's a lot of fuel available. And it is just really dangerous terrain for folks to be walking around in and fighting a fire."

No injuries have been reported and so far there's no word on what might have caused the fire.

People who use the open space for hiking were instructed to leave the area and trails around the fire were closed.

Anyone who was seeing the smoke was asked to avoid calling 911. "Crews are already aware of the fire," the Boulder Office of Emergency Management tweeted .

Boulder is experiencing extremely hot temperatures like other areas on Colorado's Front Range. At 12:45 p.m. the thermometer was at 97 degrees.