Noon Thursday

On Thursday morning, Bobra Goldsmith returned to her property north of Boulder to peer into the smoking pit that had been her ranch house.

A bathtub, smeared gray with soot, sat in the basement filled with still-hot ashes from the fire that destroyed her home in a matter of hours Wednesday. Now, only the fireplace chimneys are still standing. The sweet, earthy scent of smoldering junipers stung the throats of a small crowd of onlookers.

Goldsmith kept an urn filled with the ashes of her late husband, Ulrich, a former University of Colorado professor, on the mantle of the fireplace.

"It's the first thing we're going to go diving for when it cools down," said Lynley Nichol, longtime friend of Goldsmith. "I hope we find him."

Goldsmith, who runs Rocky Mountain Llamas, was surrounded Thursday by the tight-knit -- and surprisingly large -- community of Front Range llama ranchers, who offered her places to stay, muffins, coffee and hugs.

"When we got here yesterday afternoon, we offered her to come stay at our house," said Steve Carson, whose daughter, Alyssa, works with Goldsmith's llamas. "But she already had 10 offers by then."

"She's the llama goddess," said another woman, wearing llama earrings. "Think what we wouldn't know without Bobra."

Jean Pless, who owns a couple of llamas herself, agreed. Even with more than 160 llamas on her ranch -- many of which ambled around the ranch yesterday, seemingly oblivious to any tragedy -- Goldsmith can recognize each one immediately.

"She understands them so well, and imparts her knowledge to other people," Pless said.

Wednesday

Bobra Goldsmith, 78, was dressing for a dentist appointment a few minutes before 1 p.m. Wednesday when an assistant at her family’s llama ranch ran inside.

“She came running in and said there’s a fire,” Goldsmith said as she watched towering flames and black smoke turn her home of 20 years into ash. “I thought about grabbing a hose, but it was too late.”

Boulder County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Phil West said a powerful wind gust blew over a power line a few yards from Goldsmith’s rural property at 7202 45th St. between the Diagonal and North Foothills highways, sparking a grassfire that quickly consumed the home and spread into an adjacent 35-acre field.

A few minutes before the fire started, a digital weather station at the house recorded a peak wind gust of 80 mph, Goldsmith said.

As she ran from the house — without the chance to grab even a jacket, Goldsmith said — the flames spread to a grassy field containing a barn, a livestock pen and more than 160 frantic llamas and alpacas.

Goldsmith, a retired University of Colorado French and music professor, boards and cares for the animals through her company, Rocky Mountain Llamas.

With the help of neighbors, friends and employees, Goldsmith managed to wrangle all of the animals to safety while firefighters worked unsuccessfully against howling winds to try to save the house.

After only about an hour, the large, single-story home was reduced to a smoldering black frame.

Complicating the fight, firefighters at the scene said, were the high winds and the lack of a water source at the home.

Tanker trucks took turns dumping hundreds of gallons of water into a makeshift reservoir that firefighters set up down Goldsmith’s long gravel driveway. Another truck then pumped the water through hundreds of feet of line set up by firefighters to reach the inferno.

As Goldsmith watched the futile effort from a van used to transport her llamas, she said nearly 80 years of memories were lost to the flames.

“My mother was an artist,” she said. “The house was filled with her work. I can’t tell you what I’ve lost.”

The fire was the first of two blazes sparked Wednesday afternoon. Amazingly, officials said, the fires started less than an hour apart and about a mile away.

The second fire, reported along Olde Stage Road, eventually converged with the grassfire at Goldsmith’s ranch. The single, massive blaze required more than 11,000 residents to evacuate their homes and livestock.

At least two other homes burned down, sheriff’s officials said.