Leanna Jepkes was on her way home on a late summer night last year when she spotted flames on the hillside near where she lives with her husband and two children in the Jefferson County foothills.

It was the start of the Quarry fire, a blaze that over the next week would grow to nearly 600 acres. It prompted the evacuation of more than 500 homes in Deer Creek Canyon. Jepkes and her family received their evacuation notice at 2 a.m. — a mere four hours after the fire started.

The wildfire would turn out to be Jefferson County’s biggest of the year.

“It was a very apocalyptic feeling,” Jepkes said. “It was surreal and terrifying.”

Jefferson County, considered to be one of the Colorado counties most at risk for the loss of homes due to a wildfire, is standing up a new wildland fire managem

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