Colorado deputy recounts being first to see, hear Nederland fire: "The heat kind of hit me in the face"

For Boulder County Sheriff's Deputy Josh Jarboe, the early morning of Thursday, Oct. 9, is one he'll likely never forget.

"I was at my traffic spot over off (Highway) 119 as you head into the canyon," Jarboe remembers of that morning. "I had my windows down because I like to be able to hear. I start hearing a popping noise, and I wasn't familiar with that kind of noise, so I was like, 'I'm going to cruise back into town and see what's going on.'"

Just after 3:40 in the morning, Jarboe was the first person on the scene of a massive fire that ultimately destroyed 22 businesses.

"How close did you get?" asked CBS Colorado anchor Michael Spencer when meeting with Jarboe. "I pulled my car right up to it at first. The heat kind of hit me in the face."

"So you could feel it?" asked Spencer. "Oh yeah, it was hot," said Jarboe.

Jarboe called for the fire department, and once firefighters arrived, he and his partner went door-to-door alerting people who lived nearby.

"Knocking on doors. Waking people up. Trying to get them out of the way. Luckily, the embers didn't catch. It didn't spread that way," Jarboe recalled of that night.

Jarboe and Spencer met at the Caribou Village Shopping Center less than two weeks after the fire. It was Deputy Jarboe's first time back in Nederland.

"It's rough. A lot of businesses in there. Our (sheriff's office) substation was in there. This is the center of town. It's going to be kind of weird, never seeing the building again," Jarboe recounted when asked what his emotions were walking through the parking lot.

The first responders who were on scene that day are being hailed as heroes for making sure that the fire wasn't worse. When asked if he felt like a hero, Jarboe pointed the praise back at firefighters who fought the blaze.

"That's firefighters. I was just a guy with a radio who happened to be in the right place."

There is a block party to support those businesses impacted by the fire on Big Springs Road on Nov. 1 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. It's free for everyone. There will be live music, food trucks, a beer garden, and kid-friendly activities.