Wildfire: Two Years Later

This is a summary of how we escaped the Marshall Mesa wildfire that swept through parts of Boulder County, Colorado, on December 30, 2021 – killing two people, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, and upending thousands of lives.

“We” is my wife and me and our cat, while “upending” is a very imprecise term to describe the trauma, psychological and otherwise, to specific individuals during and after the conflagration, and to the community at large.

It happened on a Thursday, the last day of the work week – Friday being the New Year’s Eve holiday. Sometime in mid-to-late morning le spouse and I, both working from home, detected the unmistakable smell of smoke – woodsmoke, like a campfire. As it persisted we looked out a front window, and saw what was reminiscent of coastal fog.

At some point my wife looked at social media. Someone had posted something about a wildfire that was burning across many acres of open space, a few miles west of our neighborhood. Winds in excess of 100mph whipped its intensity. We took solace in the knowledge that a six-lane highway separated us from where the fire appeared to be burning.

A little later le spouse checked social media again. Now someone had posted video of flames burning across a wooden fence in their back yard, much closer to us. That wide highway hadn’t stopped the fire’s progress, after all.

Before much longer it became obvious that we might have to flee. It felt premature – and in truth, unreal – but I gathered a few things, like a toothbrush and a change of clothes. Also got my guitar and camera (photo ops), and the pet carrier our cat despises.

Meanwhile the smoke visible out the front grew denser and, presumably, closer.

Finally, a little after 1pm, we got the inevitable emergency robocall telling us that if we valued our lives, we would get the hell out. There are certain things you only need to hear once. Amid ever-increasing fear and uncertainty, we piled our stuff into the car and pulled away.

“Which way shall we go?” asked le spouse.

My first thought: you’re joking, right? To the west, towering columns of dense smoke. To east, clear skies.

So I sang my reply: “Blue skies, smilin’ at me! Nothin’ but blue skies...”

She was not amused.

Thousands of others fled, too. The usual five minute drive out of town became half an hour, maybe longer. Finally we reached relatively open road – but had nowhere to go, so we zig-zagged aimlessly. I don’t remember how long that lasted, or how we learned of the emergency evacuation center set up at the local YMCA. But once we did we headed over, and spent several tense hours there. Few facts were available at this point. But we did learn that our grown-and-gone kids had heard of the fire and were tracking our movements via the Find My Friends app.

That night we wound up at a hotel, where we smuggled in the cat and got our first good look, on CNN, at the scope of the disaster: jaw-dropping video of familiar sites – buildings, shopping centers, neighborhoods – consumed by immense, wide-spread flames.

The next day I posted to social media that my wife and I were safe.

We spent a largely sleepless night of profound uncertainty. I sprawled on the bed like a body with chalk lines not yet drawn. The cat kept nestling against me in this nook, that cranny, before emitting a stressful yowl.

Returned home this morning to the immense relief of finding our abode unscathed. Reeks of smoke but our neighborhood survives. Yet we are surrounded by catastrophic, unimaginable loss.

One inevitably turns to truisms at such times: like the fleeting nature of life, and the difference between what is truly important and what only seems so.

Ultimately, the cause of the fire was pinned on smoldering, wind-whipped embers, and loose power lines. Many lawsuits are pending.

As the fire’s first anniversary approached, I talked to some people directly involved in these events. Can we ever recover? “We, as a community, are all irretrievably altered,” one said to me. “It’s a communal trauma.” Recovery is a relative term.

Now, two years after that devastating event, the trauma remains. To a casual observer the worst may seem over: homes being rebuilt, burned debris hauled off, once-charred open space covered in new growth.

But take a closer look, and the scars are plain as day. The wildfire is never far from my thoughts, and is never far, no doubt, from the thoughts of anyone else who lived through it. A windy day, common enough around here, is a psychological trigger. And probably always will be.