Jason Rol and his buddies waited over four hours to get back to his BMW repair shop after an army of firefighters dumped water on their yard, rolled up their hoses and drove away.
There were more than 100 cars parked behind Rol’s garage. The black plume of smoke over Thornton on Wednesday afternoon appeared when a wind-stoked grassfire engulfed them. The 10-acre fire forced I-25 to shut down, as well as door-to-door evacuations by officers, before being contained by fire crews hours later.
Rol was in shock when he returned and finally saw the damage up close. The building housing his tools was unscathed, but nearly everything out back had been incinerated. The cars were now just black skeletons — some still hot. Rivers of aluminum, from rims and struts melted in the blaze, streamed across a moonscape of broken concrete and dirt.
“That was a perfectly good truck,” he said as he approached his personal vehicle. “There’s nothing left.”
Then he grabbed a hose. There were still flames rising from the rubble.
“I don’t think I have insurance for this,” he said.
Rol Race Motorsports suffered the worst damage on Wednesday
84th Avenue was filled with emergency workers and fire trucks all afternoon.
Rol’s colleague, Joe Dovilla, said he was the one who called 911. A little before noon, he said, he watched the fire race towards the yard, shooting video from the roof of his Jeep. Then, everyone had to run from the flames.
When it was all over, the grassy field between the garage and an evacuated high school nearby was covered in black ash. The yard next door showed some damage, and the storefronts on the hill above the blaze looked untouched.
But the cars did burn. Rol Race Motorsports owned most of them. Some belonged to customers whom Rol would need to call.
They had lost more than money here, Dovilla said, as he inspected the still-smoldering remains of his Jeep.
“[It had] the most sought-after stuff in the off-road community. Probably about ten grand worth of transmission and transfer case, and another seven grand in parts. I just built the motor,” he said as he absent-mindedly squeezed a ketchup packet into his mouth. “It doesn’t matter about the price. It was all my skill of fabrication.”
“I’m tired. I can’t even do this anymore. I don’t even want to look at it.”
Authorities say they are investigating
Rol’s sister-in-law, Miranda Bergin, was livid when she arrived at the scene.
“Have you called the cops?” she asked as Rol wandered through the wreckage.
He had not. He was still taking all of this in. She was focused on suing whoever was responsible.
“Someone needs to be held accountable,” she said. “You’re going to jail. Sorry! You don’t get to ruin a bunch of property, dude!”
Sabrina Iacovetta, spokesperson for Thornton’s fire department, said someone could be arrested for the fire if the fire marshal’s investigation finds evidence of arson.
“Arson — yes it is a crime. Anyone over the age of 10 can be charged with arson,” she said. ”You do have to prove, was it intentional? Was it accidental? Which can be hard. That’s difficult to prove.”
Colorado was once one of the worst states in the nation for wildfire investigations, though the state legislature passed a bill in 2023 to hire more people to carry out that work. State authorities have looked into over 300 blazes since that law took effect, arresting 15 people for causing fires in that time.
Still, Iacovetta is correct. Proving intent, or even who is responsible, is tricky. There were no charges filed in the investigation of the 2021 Marshall Fire, though thousands of people did sue Xcel Energy over the disaster. The utility’s power lines were accused of causing the fire, but Xcel did not admit guilt in its settlement.
Iacovetta said Thornton’s investigation is ongoing.
“Right now, they’re still trying to gather all of that information,” she said. ”Where did it start? And we’ll try to find out if there was anybody that was there that caused this.”
