Dec 30-31, 2021

Summary: On December 30, 2021 our house was taken in the Colorado Marshall wildfire. We smelled smoke around noon, evacuated around 1pm, and our house was gone by 5pm. We had no emergency warnings and found it all out on Twitter/Facebook. We’re so grateful that our kids’ school was coincidentally closed that week, so we were able to quickly evacuate to Nick’s parents house (where we stayed for 5 days until we started to figure things out). We gathered the cats, our lockbox, and Avery’s favorite stuffed animal — and that’s it. The details, timeline, and photos/video we collected (mostly from Twitter) are below.

The week leading up to Thursday 12/30/21: 

• Sunday 12/26, we find out daycare is closed all week because too many teachers have COVID. This was supposed to be a week to get a bit of a breather, take some time off work, and have a little time for ourselves. (spoiler alert: we do not get a breather)
• Haven’t seen Nick’s parents since Christmas because Nick’s mom, Debbie, is recovering from ankle surgery.
• Kate got her COVID booster on Tuesday 12/28 and didn’t sleep that night with chills/fever. Wednesday she felt horrible, so we plan for her to have a break on Thursday morning.

Thursday December 30, 2021

• Nick has kids at his parents’ house so Kate can get a few things done now that she’s feeling a bit better post-booster. 
• Kate is at home, sitting in the dining room making some end of year donations, paying off some credit cards, etc. 
• 11:57am – Kate smells smoke. Texts Nick “It’s super smokey here all of a sudden”
• 12:12pm – Kate texts Nick “Can almost not see Dave and Marcie’s (the neighbors diagonal across the street)
• 12:16pm – Kate posts smoke and wind to her FB Story. It’s just wild how quickly it happened.

• 12:21pm – Kate texts Nick “Visibility is really bad”
• 12:50pm – Nick leaves Tom/Debbies to come back home for kids nap
• 12:51pm – Superior emails their list saying residents in part of the town have been evacuated.
• 12:59pm – Superior emails and now ALL of Superior is being evacuated.
• 1:05pm – Kate calls to tell Nick Superior is being evacuated and we should go back to Tom and Debbie’s, he’s pulling into the driveway as we speak.
• 1:08pm – Nick runs inside to poop, the kids stay in the car, and Kate runs to sit with them. 
• 1:10 – We switch, Kate runs inside to grab the cat carriers, lockbox, laptop, running shoes, and halfway heated lunch in the microwave. Nick calls parents from driveway to tell them we’re coming back
• 1:12 – We switch again, Nick wrangles cats into carriers, grabs big bunny, and PJs for kids. 
• 1:16 – As we are pulling out of the driveway, our neighbors from across the street call to ask what’s going on. They are en route back from the mountains and are wondering if they can come home. We tell them to go somewhere else, and they find friends to hang with in Arvada. 
• 1:20pm – Traffic slows getting out of neighborhood, smoke is THICK and visibility is very poor. 

• 1:40pm – We make it to Tom/Debbie’s, explain to Avery that we’re going to nap here, and turn on the TV to watch what’s going on. 
• 2:24pm – Louisville is evacuated, which we find out via Facebook group. We are never called or texted. We finally get an email hours later.
• 2:31pm – Talk to our friend Lindsey, who was on her way out of town, and had seen the house across from hers already partially on fire. 
• 2:58pm – Kate texts Lauren “Apparently there are houses on fire on Turnberry Circle” – which is just about 7 houses down from ours. 
• 2:45pm – Lose power at 500 Muirfield (per our Nest cams)
• 2:50pm – Salesforce calls to check on Kate’s safety
• 3:16pm – See photo from Avista hospital on Twitter, facing our neighborhood.

• 3:26pm – Golf Course (right near our house) is on fire
• 4:22pm – After the event, we learn that at 4:22pm, a house 2 down from ours gets an alert that their smoke/fire alarm is going off inside their house (they have cellular hooked up to the Ring network, so can get access even without power). 
• 4:37pm – Two huge plumes of smoke are visible from Tom and Debbie’s front door. We’re watching the news, winds still haven’t died down, known about fires in our neighborhood for an hour
• 4:41pm – We see video from hospital towards our neighborhood of houses fully engulfed

• 4:50pm-6:30pm – Kate at PetSmart + Target buying essentials and getting dinner
• 4:54pm – Finally get an email from the city of Louisville to evacuate.
• 4:57pm – Kate texts Lauren “We brought nothing but the kids pajamas. Thought we’d probably be going home tonight”
• 5:15pm – Smoke plumes visible from Anthem, another video from Avista hospital is on Twitter

• 6:04pm – Darkness fallen, massive fire plumes visible from Anthem

• 7pm – Didn’t really eat dinner, put kids to bed. Figure out sleeping arrangements for kids and cats. Watched news continuously, refreshing Twitter.
• 8-9pm – Winds die down. Flames die down, we can’t see them from Anthem anymore.
• 9:08pm – See this video of our neighborhood on Twitter

• 9:27pm – See this picture and video of our intersection (you turn right at this light, and our house is directly in front of you) posted by the Broomfield Police department. It’s gone.

Originally tweeted by @BroomfieldPD on December 30, 2021.

• 9:42pm – Nick talks to Mike, our neighbor who’s in Costa Rica on vacation. Mike says he heard from another neighbor that there’s nothing left and the neighborhood is flattened. It’s honestly impossible to believe. It seems fake. There’s no way that’s true.
• 10:30pm – Went to bed, scrolling and scrolling through Twitter, Facebook, etc. Obviously we knew it was gone, but we still needed validation. Over and over and over and over. 

December 31, 2021

• Overnight – Twitter and Facebook scrolling continues. People are just asking “What about Pine St? What about Mulberry St? What about Coal Creek Ranch?” Kate sees post on Nextdoor from the previous owner of our house.

• Realizing we have a bajillion things to do now, Kate starts starts googling, checking insurance policy, panic buying Christmas presents for Avery, making DMV appointment since her license was in the house, emailing therapist, etc.

• 3am – Nick wakes up after getting a quick snooze. We know the house is gone. We cry, and worry about how to break the news to Avery that everything is gone. All her toys, her room, her Christmas presents. It’s hard enough to do this, but to have to help Avery understand it makes it so much worse.
• 5:57am – Kate calls her sister Amy to tell her the house is gone. It’s the first time we’ve really said it out loud. 
• 6:15am – We make the plan and told Avery, she didn’t really get it and we cried more than she did. She just wants to make sure her new toys are purple, since that’s her favorite color.
• 6:23am – Kate calls her parents to tell them. 
• 7:15am – Kate goes to Target for essentials (somehow Eric and Amy already managed to send a big gift card!), trying to get snow clothes for Avery so she went right when it opened. Kate has a bit of a meltdown at Target when she sees all the things we used to own. She starts sweating, crying, ripping off jacket. Talks to Lauren on the phone and calms down. Spent $600 at Target and still don’t own a pen.
• 8:16am – Nick files homeowners insurance claim w/ GEICO. 
• 10:04am – The aerial shot of our street is on the local news

• Throughout the day, we’re checking in with neighbors, continuing to watch the news for updates, and beginning to think about what the hell we’re going to do now. Lauren buys us tons of things at Old Navy (Target had very little in our sizes!). We both call our jobs to let them know and start to understand our options for taking time off to deal with all this. We talk to the kids’ school to let them know we were one of the families impacted, etc. We start to understand how the insurance process will help us find housing, etc.
• 1:33pm – We share on Facebook that it’s gone. The love and support start POURING in. It’s unbelievable and completely overwhelming — in the best way. Thank you.

• 6:30pm – Our street is featured all day in news coverage using drone shots. Now on NBC Nightly News:

As we begin to realize the enormity of this, we feel overwhelmed, grateful, and panicked….all at once. For a while.