(Sunset after the Marshall Fires in Colorado, 12/30/21)
In Colorado, High Fire Warnings used to be for the mountains or sometimes the prairies. Now, due to the extreme drought we have been in and the winds that blow up to 100 miles an hour, they are for the cities, too.
On Thursday, December 30th, the Marshall Fire up in and around Superior Colorado (Between Denver and Boulder) destroyed over a thousand homes. I watched with great horror as the fire was televised. (Or in my case, computerized.) I grew up with a father who was a firefighter and know more details about what happens in a house fire, inside the housefire to the residents, for example, than I have ever wanted to remember for any reason. All that came flooding back. And now that this particular fire is over, homeowners who thought they had enough insurance to rebuild after a fire are learning that they don't have nearly enough.
Skip forward almost four months and now Denver has been in a fire warning zone for almost a week. Again, the drought has not abated and the winds are horrific. I live on the fourth floor of an apartment complex. Right now we don’t have an elevator in my section (see my last post for the shooting up of the elevator) and I am climbing the stairs for two weeks or more, possibly. My hope is that I would be paying enough attention that if a fire grew close, I would have time to plan transportation and catch my cat. No, actually my hope is there will be no fire in Denver. But I’m sure the families in Superior had hoped the same thing…