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Black bear next to firefighter extinguishing blaze
Bears can cause plenty of damage if they manage to make their way into a place they’re not supposed to be. That was certainly the case with one in Colorado, which managed to infiltrate a home it ransacked before starting a fire in the kitchen.
There are certain parts of the country where coming across a bear while going about your business is almost as common as spotting a seagull at the beach or seeing a rat scurry across the tracks while you’re waiting for the subway in New York City.
That’s the case in some areas of Colorado, a state that’s believed to be home to upwards of 20,000 black bears. They primarily reside in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, and there’s evidence that suggests there could be an average of around two of them per square mile in the most densely populated regions if you extrapolate data from 2014.
Bears are listed alongside mountain lions as “prominent neighbors” on the website for Crested Butte, the fairly remote ski town located an approximately four-hour drive southwest of Denver.
Residents who are drawn there by its natural beauty learn to become accustomed to the wildlife that comes with the territory, including a couple of people who experienced a fairly harrowing ordeal after a bear invaded their home for a second time.
A bear started a kitchen fire after breaking into a home in Colorado
Crested Butte is located in Gunnison County, which ranked fifth on the list of Colorado’s 64 jurisdictions when it came to the number of reports involving “bear activity related to garbage” in 2025.
However, it doesn’t appear there was any clear-cut explanation for an incident that unfolded in Crested Butte in the middle of the night on August 19th, one that the town’s fire department recapped in a lengthy Facebook post on Thursday.
Police and firefighters were dispatched to the home after receiving a call concerning a bear they say “forced its way through an exterior door and then broke through a large pane of glass in an interior entryway door to gain full access to the home.”
It proceeded to make its way into the kitchen and raid the fridge, knock over a trash can, and break a wooden drying rack that ended up on the stove it seemingly managed to turn on during the rampage. Two people who were awoken by the commotion called 911 after hearing it scratching on their bedroom door as a smoke alarm blared in the background, a noise that made it “increasingly erratic and aggressive.”
The police officers who arrived on the scene encountered the bear “attempting to break through the living room’s front window, with smoke and flames visible in the kitchen behind it,” and they proceeded to euthanize the animal before the fire department arrived on the scene to successfully extinguish the blaze.
The post says there was “extensive damage throughout the residence caused by the bear,” and the people who live there said this was the second time one of those animals had made its way inside the home.
The carcass was removed by Colorado Parks and Wildlife, which didn’t spot any trash or other items that could have attracted the bear and said an ongoing drought has driven the animals to resort to more audacious methods in their quest for food and water.