EAGLE -- There are a number of incredible stories from Wednesday's fire and many of them have to do with the firefighters who risked their lives to save people and property.
Over 350 firefighters from several different agencies worked on the Highway 16 Fire.
With that, there's a lot of coordination involved in order to get ahead of the fire and put it out.
"The simplest way to take a fire is to divide it and conquer it," said Eagle Fire Deputy Chief Mark Rabdau.
That's the 50,000-foot view on how to fight a fire. But that's not the view that fires are always fought from.
"What you try to do is, as fire is you try to look at where is it going to go. Worst case scenario, where is it going to go? So we try to plan ahead. We came down and looked at this area, we got what resources we had on hand and we pre-staged them," said Rabdau.
And that involves planning.
"It's short term planning. It's kind of spur of the moment, because you don't have an option to plan for this," said Rabdau.
The Highway 16 Fire moved west to east. Homes dotted the foothills in between rolling hills and dry weeds. Fire destroyed some homes and hills, while avoiding others.
"It's the weather, it's the wind, it's the topography. Everything just kind of comes together or works to your advantage or against you, and sometimes it's luck," said Rabdau.
And sometimes the right equipment proves to be the difference.
Helicopters and air tankers dropping water and retardant were key in fighting this fire.
"The helicopters, they are very accurate with their buckets, and you can work with them directly, in close proximity to your crews, because they can control them better, so hand crews work with them directly and call in the bucket strikes," said Rabdau.
While there were a few homes destroyed, the majority were saved. Homes like Rick Green's.
"They saved these two houses up here, I can't say enough, and they were here all night," said Green.
"Best we could do at the time with what we had," said Rabdau.
Rabdau said that law enforcement played a key role in helping the fire efforts.
Even though they didn't fight the fire he said they made it really easy for crews to get around and in front of the fire.
