Three people stomped out three small fires on the side of Colorado Highway 9 after seeing them start Tuesday, June 9.

Summit County resident Justin Erwin was one of the passersby. He said he pulled over as he was driving east on the highway near its intersection with Elkhorn Street after seeing something explode on a power line pole and fire fall to the ground.

“I saw an explosion and a lot of smoke, and I saw fire, like, spewing down to the ground,” Erwin said. “I don’t know what really caused it. All I saw was the flames just went flying.”

As Erwin drove past the pole, he noticed fires had ignited on the ground, so he pulled over as soon as he could and ran back toward them. Another man and his son saw the incident and stopped as well, so the three worked together to stomp out the flames.

Erwin called 911 to report what happened and eventually left after a Dillon Keystone Police Department officer arrived.

“It was pretty crazy, man,” Erwin said. “It was a windy day. I don’t know if that had anything to do with it, but yeah, I mean, the fire was moving quick.”

It took about a minute for Erwin to get to the fire from the time it ignited, he said, and the ground in the area was dry. He said he was glad someone was around to extinguish it quickly, as the fires had ignited relatively close to homes on the north side of Highway 9.

Steve Lipsher, the public information officer for Summit Fire & EMS, wrote in a text message Tuesday that a Summit Fire battalion chief responded to make sure the smoldering areas of grass were fully extinguished, but the situation did not require the department to dispatch any more firefighters.

Summit County’s fire danger moved to high the same day as the fires Erwin and others stomped out. Matt Benedict, a Red, White and Blue Fire Protection District division chief, wrote in an email about the fire danger that the rating increased from moderate despite vegetation in the county continuing to green up.

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The change, he wrote, came because weather forecasts predicted critical fire weather in the next week — conditions that include high winds like Erwin described.

Summit County has not yet entered fire restrictions, and Benedict wrote in the email that the lack of restrictions has been in part due to the green vegetation. He added that he does not expect those conditions to last much longer.

Also Tuesday, Summit County Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons said at a Summit Board of County Commissioners meeting that, while some counties west of Summit have entered restrictions, the data officials here have collected do not yet warrant them.

In response to questions about what caused the explosion and fire, how long power outages caused by the incident lasted and whether the power lines were in enhanced power line safety settings, among others, an Xcel Energy spokesperson provided a statement that said the incident occurred “due to an electrical event.”

Sydney Isenberg, the Xcel spokesperson, wrote that Xcel crews arrived promptly and made repairs to restore service to 80 customers who had lost power because of the incident. If people see downed power lines or other issues, Isenberg wrote that they should assume lines are energized and extremely dangerous and call 800-895-1999 to report the issue.

Erwin said he has heard power lines explode before but had never seen anything like what he saw Tuesday. He thought people would be interested to know about the incident and the seemingly fast-spreading fires, so he shared the story in a local Facebook group.

“I’ve had plenty of campfires, and I put them out like you’re supposed to, but nothing that you just see, random, that is potentially gonna take out a whole bunch of homes,” Erwin said.