The clean up from the Marshall Fire is only beginning near Louisville, Colo.
Kirk Siegler/NPRThe Marshall Fire was started by 100 mile an hour winds in the dead of winter and raced into the suburbs east of Boulder. It started a shopping center and a hotel.
The only thing left in the rubble is the elevator shaft. Suburban neighborhoods are leveled. Marshall was the most destructive wildfire in Colorado. The hum of giant bulldozers is heard all around, as they scoop up twisted burnt debris, torched patio furniture, smashed ceramic garden pots and even the skeletons of charred cars.
"When I drive through our neighborhood and it looks like a war zone, I can't help but just be shocked." says Lonni Pearce, who lost everything in the fire.
The professor at the University of Colorado was not sure if she and her family would rebuild after the disaster. They feel lucky to have found a place to rent. The trauma of the Marshall Fire has returned as the fierce winds like those that whipped it have returned to the area.
It felt like can this really be happening again?
The Colorado Front Range was not under a red flag warning for extreme fire danger recently. Arzelia Walker was forced to leave her home in south Boulder after the recent NCAR Fire.
The Marshall Fire was in the dead of winter, and Walker says it's terrifying.
Walker is a college town with a lot of people at the doorstep of the Rocky Mountains.
She says that big winds tend to come in the winter so that has not been a problem in the past.
Climate change has made winters warmer. The NCAR Fire was named after the climate change research lab it threatened, but many Boulderites didn't care. Firefighters were able to get it under control before it got bigger than 200 acres.
Brian Oliver is the division chief for Boulder Fire.
Oliver stood on the mesa where NCAR sits, with a panoramic view of the city and its striking flatiron rock formations. He put fire engines in strategic places because of red flag warnings. In Fort Collins, a pair of heavy air tankers were on call, assuming it was safe for them to fly in the wind.
Oliver says that there is a feeling of, I am not sure the word to use is on edge.
Oliver says it has been relentless since a mass shooting at a grocery store a year ago. The NCAR fire caused an estimated 19,000 people to be evacuated and traffic was congested. Oliver would rather be cautious than have people trapped behind a fire. Modern wildfires will never be stopped by firefighters.
He equates that to trying to fight a storm. We get everybody out of the way and then we try to clean up after ourselves.
These are not the fires burning into new communities out in the woods that have grabbed headlines. 40 years ago, Boulder capped growth and sprawl. The fires are brought into the city by climate change.
Federal leaders, including Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, toured Boulder County this week trying to sound an alarm. The hillsides of the Calwood Fire were one of their stops. In October of 2020, it burned 10,000 acres and destroyed homes. The largest wildfire in the state until last year was also in Larimer County.
The congressman who represents the two counties says it is clear that fire seasons no longer exist in Colorado.
President Biden signed an infrastructure law in November that provides $130 million in new fire funding. Prevention and hiring more fire crews in the western states will be funded by it.
Scores of people in crisis in Boulder County will not be helped by the spending plan. Lonni was happy with the news that her home burned down.
She says it feels like this is a tipping point and that we need to start doing things differently.
Westerners have to live with fire, even in cities, as a result of changing landscaping and building codes.
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