“For firefighters, that was a career fire.””

NFPD Chief Charlie Schmidtmann

NEDERLAND — “There was no way to save the building, and we knew that pulling up,” Nederland Fire Protection District Chief Charlie Schmidtmann said, as he told The Mountain-Ear his witnessing the immensity of the fire that consumed the Caribou Village Shopping Center.

“I knew that the carousel had survived at least three fires, and we knew how critical The Market was for the community, so the new plan was that we were going to do everything in our power to protect those two buildings and make sure we had no extension into the community.”  

The fire

Schmidtmann awoke to the call in the early morning of October 9, 2025. It was his first night back in his own bed, as he had just returned from vacation. 

“I came around the corner from Ridge and Hurricane Hill and you could just see the glow.” Schmidtmann detailed his vantage point, and how it conveyed the size of the problem at hand. He remembers thinking, “Holy cow, this is going to be big.” 

After stopping off to the station for extra gear, and taking a quick phone call from his wife, who was on a late shift and just wanted to be sure he was awake, Schmidtmann arrived right behind the first arriving firefighter, Captain Conor Moran. 

“We were both in awe,” Schmidtmann recalled, as all of the training on hypothetical scenarios for a fire at the shopping center needed instantly to fold into one actionable plan.  

“We’ve talked about it, trained on it, but we’ve always looked at that building in pieces, so if the fire was at Dr. Camerata’s office and it started to grow, we would isolate the building here and do X, Y, and Z there to keep the fire from extending.” 

“I had just done a training for that building and the worst case scenario was just a quarter of the building,” Fire Marshal Joslin noted about their plans, “and even that worst case scenario was surpassed.” 

Joslin was also thrust out of bed by the call, and remembers seeing the orange glow of the fire reflecting on the walls of his house as he descended his own stairwell. 

“That first hour felt like five hours,” Joslin said, as he immediately responded to the other side of the building, adjacent to Big Springs Road. “I remember Conor coming up and asking, ‘Hey, what do you need?’ Well, how about six or seven more firefighters, please!” 

Soon after “taking the nozzle” and spraying down the fire, Joslin felt his leg vibrating. Later, he discovered that it was Chief, who did not know that Joslin had responded already. Schmidtmann left the Fire Marshal a voicemail: “Andrew. Big fire. Biiiiiig fire. 20 Lakeview.”  

In the first adrenaline-fueled moments of the response, calm heads prevailed and a plan to keep the fire from spreading to the neighboring buildings was enacted. Schmidtmann called for all the immediate resources at his disposal, from the Boulder Emergency Squad and their hotspot detecting drones, to Xcel Energy, who needed to dig up the street to turn off the gas lines. 

“Every group had a team leader—a lieutenant, a captain, senior firefighter—and we had a safety officer making sure that people are okay,” Schmidtmann noted. 

“Off the bat we had 8 or 10 initial responders from our agency. People fought the fire until 7 or 8 a.m. before they had to go to work; we had Board members coming in and rolling hoses; we had retired firefighters calling to see if they could come in and help. We had all of these people from all of these different backgrounds, and 80% of them were volunteers, fighting this giant fire.”  

Boulder County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) and Timberline Fire Protection District were among the first neighboring organizations to join the fight, followed by Sugarloaf, AMR Ambulance, Gilpin County Sheriff’s Office, and the Black Hawk and Central City Fire Departments. The support helped the NFPD completely prevent the spread of the fire, and saw all responders utilizing all of their skills to fill any role that was needed during those crucial minutes. 

“For firefighters, that was a career fire,” Schmidtmann said, “a fire that none of us hopefully ever see again—but it’s something you’ll talk about for a long time because you’ve trained for it, you’ve prepared, so all of that previous experience comes into play.”

“On smaller fires you use a handful of those skill sets,” Joslin agreed, “but on a fire of that magnitude you’re going to open up the whole book.” 

“You take your toolbox, open it up, and you dump it on the ground,” Schmidtmann added. 

The Caribou Village Shopping Center smolders as firefighters put out hot spots after fire completely destroyed the building and many businesses in only a few hours.

Photo Courtesy of Nederland Fire Protection District

The investigation 

“That investigation was extremely intense,” Joslin said, going back to being on the nozzle, realizing that the sun had come out, but the winds hadn’t begun to swirl like he was worried about. “But as I realized that that was not going to happen, and the hairs on the back of my neck started to sit back down and I started to relax, then it hit me: ‘Oh yeah, somebody’s got to investigate this fire.’” 

Joslin got on the phone and went fishing for backup, finding only four investigators for a 30,000 square foot building. “That math isn’t mathing—I need an army of people,” he thought. “We need to get leads, we need to get video, we need to interview people. It would’ve been different if it was just one business, but we’re talking over 20.” 

He didn’t get an army, but he got the next best thing, after the one attending officer from the Colorado Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives immediately advised Andrew to get in touch with the National Response Team.

“We had the best of the best there,” Joslin stated. “Each of the responders were subject matter experts; they were brilliant and a joy to work with and they included us in everything.” Joslin also praised the work of BCSO and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for helping him canvass and gather up to 97% of the video footage for the investigation. 

The investigation changed Joslin’s perspective on how he views building inspections around Nederland, which he conducts as one of his primary responsibilities as Fire Marshal.  

“In the fire service we’re in the game of risk management, but the probability that something is going to become an issue, that’s the other thing to balance, and this building has helped me to understand that grey area.” 

As for new construction, Joslin has seen a lot of excitement from the developers of multi-million dollar projects—including Tebo Properties—over “following the rules” of the recently adopted 2024 package of International Building, Residential, Mechanical, Plumbing, Fuel Gas, Energy Conservation,  Property Maintenance, Existing Building, and Fire Codes. 

“I spoke with the architect a few weeks ago and I feel encouraged by the relationship working with him,” Joslin said. “He was excited to show me the sprinkler system and to explain the ceiling assemblies and separations. He had already been doing the research, and we want to see that early on in the planning stages, that ultimately safety is the motivation as to why things are the way they are.”

Though he did not understate the importance of fire prevention from a design standpoint, Joslin reiterated how interior finishing, from desks and sofas to light fixtures, have caused fires to be easier to ignite and burn hotter and faster due to the toxicity and flammability of the plastics used to make them. 

Post-post fire

“We try and compartmentalize, to focus and work on the task at hand,” Schmidtmann said, trying to sum up the emotional impact of fighting the Lakeview Fire, and the emotional weight that’s carried still. 

“It’s triage,” Joslin agreed. “We do it on a medical call, a wildland call. Afterwards, I think firefighters are very quick to be their own worst critics. It’s ingrained in us to hot wash things—to talk about what went right, what went wrong. Even on the smallest call we’ll talk about how to be better. We try and be honest about how things went, be critical of ourselves and one another in an environment where it feels safe to do so.” 

Though the NFPD has resources to help firefighters work through the tragedies that they face, Schmidtmann was sure to give credit to the Nederland community for their support and understanding, as it helped all at the District feel less isolated. 

“The community has been amazing with the respect towards the people who responded,” he said. “This is our community too, this is our town, but we’re the ones who also have to second guess about the things that could have changed it.”

Despite such second guessing and moments of doubt, in the end Schmidtmann knows that he and his team were successful in their mission of containing the Lakeview Fire. 

“I think the responders that we had did an amazing job and the fact that it wasn’t a windy day saved Big Springs.” Schmidtmann added that the Lakeview Fire, the Chipeta Park porta-potty fire, and the close-call lightning strikes over the summer have only stressed to him the importance of an emergency egress route for the Big Springs neighborhood. 

“We had no injuries, we got the fire out, we had close to 4500 gallons per minute on that fire immediately and that water system handled it fine,” Joslin said. “That fire was a textbook response from our agency, and I couldn’t be more proud to have been a part of it.”

In the end, the final determination from the ATF’s report on the cause of the Lakeview Fire is the only hanging thread; the one last fact that some community members need in order to move on.

For Schmidtmann, Joslin, and the NFPD—as residents of Nederland and engaged responders in the community—the feeling is mutual. 

“I understand that people want answers, and this weighs on us as well,” Schmidtmann said. 

“As much as the community needs to heal, so does the department,” Joslin concluded. “We need the closure too.”