John Zarrella: Colorado in flames

CNN's John Zarrella

(CNN) -- The largest wildfire in Colorado history lurked just south of Denver on Wednesday, threatening to torch communities, camps, recreation areas and ranches.

The Hayman fire, which was sparked Saturday by an illegal campfire, is just one of at least eight fires burning across the state. Containment is nowhere in sight, and more than 6,000 residents have been evacuated.

CNN's John Zarrella is in Castle Rock, Colorado, where he reported Wednesday that fire officials are hoping for a break in the weather.

ZARRELLA: The front page of this morning's Rocky Mountain News pretty much says it all: "Scorched earth, 150,000 acres." That's from no less than eight fires burning here in the Colorado area. The worst fire, of course, the Hayman fire, not far from us, just to the southwest -- about 87,000 acres burning in this fire.

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We are here in Douglas County at a command center. And what the command officials here hope for is perhaps a break in the weather. [Tuesday] they got a little bit of a break in that the winds shifted direction and forced the fire back on itself. That was good news for the suburbs outside of Denver -- a lot of people, many people stayed in their homes, they did not need to evacuate.

But in what firefighters call the heel of the fire, down on the southern end, that shift in wind direction forced the fire back on communities near Florissant. What that meant is about 5,000 people had to evacuate very quickly from their homes and residences down in those mountainous communities near Florissant.

A little while ago I spoke to Red Cross officials here who told me that while they had hundreds and hundreds of people in the five shelters that are open in the four-county area here, that only about 100 people stayed overnight.

I asked, "Where do all these people go when they leave? They're not going back to their homes." And I was told that what they're doing is staying with friends, staying with family, moving into hotels and motels as best they can in the surrounding areas.

Now again, 87,000 acres burned from this fire. [Wednesday's] weather conditions expected to be much like they were [Tuesday] -- the winds a little bit lighter, the humidity about 14, 15 percent, a little bit higher humidity than they've had here, and the temperature in the low 80s with afternoon thunderstorms, a chance here in the Denver area.

So again, a very, very serious situation. The fire is by no means under control at all.

CNN: We mentioned that officials are pleading for some 800 more firefighters to come to the region. If they volunteer their services, how soon might that kind of help come their way?

ZARRELLA: They're trying to get that help in periodically, starting immediately. They have two of what they called Type One teams here, which are the really, really top-notch federal firefighters. They've got another firefighting team that they've called in already. They're starting to ratchet it up as quickly as possible, and they say that they expect to have about 1,000 firefighters on the ground here within the next few days.