Fort Collins, Colorado---On June 9, 2012 fire raged through 87,284 acres of the High Park area leaving 259 homes destroyed in its path and one death. Now one year later I drove up the mountain to my friend’s house on June 9, 2013 and started noticing the damage getting worse and worse the closer I got to their home. As asphalt turned into gravel that turned into dirt I started wondering if I might have got my information wrong and they no longer lived here. There were few homes and charcoal black burned trees everywhere.
But my GPS remarkably lead me to their mountain
house and as I hesitated at the driveway, out popped my friend and her husband
from the front door. Before I even said
hello I blurted out, “What happened?!”
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| 2012 |
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| A year later...2013 regrowth |
They explained that it just happened to be the one year anniversary of the High Park Fires that swept their area and was the state’s largest disaster until later that year; a larger fire had an even worse result.
I felt terrible. Living in my own little world in Florida, I
had no idea that out of eight homes on their long winding street, they were the
only address to not burn to the ground. Weirdly the fire had come as close as 6
feet from the house but left the house, barn, shop, garage, wood shed, and
chicken house.
For the next couple of days I not only learned more about
what they and neighbors had gone through I would soon start smelling smoke and
as I traveled around the state of Colorado, I would get a current experience of
people losing their homes in two more communities.
But a year ago, for my friends in the mountains near Fort
Collins, it was a Saturday and they saw the fire at 10:30 am but
it was 7-1/2 miles away. Having had similar scares, they started packing up
things. By 2pm the official call for evacuation came and at 6pm the police
physically were at the street warning people to get out. Because they had
several vehicles, they were shuttling down the mountain to a friend’s house,
she left around 11:30pm and he left around midnight.
He tried to return one more time at 12:30am and one of the
officers from the Sherriff’s department said they would shoot him if he crossed
their line.
At the friends, they had a clear view of the range of
mountains that was being consumed. They all stayed up until 3am watching the
burning mountains and described entire trees exploding as the intense heat
overwhelmed the dry forest.
They fell asleep in their camper parked at their friends and
were awoken at 4:15am to their friend pounding on their door and telling them
the fire had turned and now they were being evacuated from this location.
They shuttled everything down to an elementary school in
Fort Collins by 4:50am and just stayed up attending the 11am information
meeting that morning.
From here, they described the emotional roller coaster.
This was more than a mountain house. It had been the life
work of her husband who, as a master carpenter, had bought a tiny house and
added several additions on to it using interesting recycled wood that he
refurbished to make this mountain house truly unique, all the way down to the
kitchen cabinet handles that he had hand forged himself!
Now there was little hope. They had a neighbor who was a
firefighter so even though the information meetings, that grew so large they
had to be moved to the fairgrounds, were only general information with little
to nothing specific, they were getting some inside information about their
street.
Then word came. Their house was gone. Everything was “to the
ground”.
The firefighter called it “Armageddon” and because the fire had burned in a horse shoe shape and then started filling in, it had been so
bad that all firefighting had to stop and wait as the heavy winds within the inferno allowed any thing more to be safely done.
So for 24 hours they processed this information. They cried
and mourned the loss. They got to know an entire Canyon of residents that they
had had no reason to see or even knew there was a house on that lot due to the
surrounding trees. This was a fraternity that no one wants to be in, yet having
others that felt the same does help.
Then everything flipped. New word came that their house was
standing. The fire was contained enough
that an opportunity came up to join a quick “drive and grab” for neighbors
business equipment so her husband went to help and got to look and visually
confirm their buildings were all standing.
Spinning them from a feeling of loss to a feeling of guilt
that they had been spared, they waited for three weeks to return to their property.
My friend told me that when the area was contained actual
news of properties were released. This was done at the Fairgrounds in a room
that had been prepared with voting booths. The booths had signs above them with
names of areas within High Park Canyon. Families would stand in line and when
it was their turn, could go behind the curtain to look at the list of
addresses. If your address was in yellow, it was burned down. If it was not, it
was still standing. She described the anguish that she watched as some people
just found out.
Why were my friends spared? Was it the ongoing clearing that
he had done, cutting down trees and cleaning up the underbrush? He had said he
felt ridiculous doing it each year when no one else was but he continued. Was
it the huge tanks of water that he kept on property and had burst that may have
created a fire line six feet from their home? Or was it fate and the mystery
the fire brings?
As I spent time in their home, they showed me one house that
still has not been “cleared”. Photos reveal one home’s damage. This older couple
had passed away prior to the fire and the property is owned by relatives. I spent time imagining what their home was like with many clues as to where rooms had been based on burned appliances or only the metal of the mattress springs on the ground. I walked away feeling physically sick to my stomach.
And later as I visited Boulder, Manitou Springs, Monument and
Denver I would experience smoke every day from Black Forest Fire and Royal Gorge Fire as well as several more that burned in June. |
| A cat collection |
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| Wine Goblets |
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| Note how some are not melted |
In Boulder I stayed with another college friend and we went to one of the staging airports and
watched a tank being refilled with Slurry as these huge planes flew directly over my friend’s house flying low with this heavy load.
In Monument, my friend’s house came within ½ mile of the pre-evacuation line and their car was loaded and parked ready to make a quick get-away.
Headlines everyday covered the loss and the smell in the air most everywhere I visited in Colorado was a constant reminder of what people had, and were going through today.
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| A look back at the High Park Mountain Ridge lined with charcoal colored trees |
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