It’s hard to believe that it has been 2 weeks since the
fire. At this time 2 weeks ago, I was
just beginning to stir and thinking about my full day ahead. Since I haven’t shared past Day 2 with you
yet, I am going to do that now.
I realize I don’t want to think about those days. It’s easier at this point to share where I am
now, but there is a chunk of the story missing.
David returned with a raging migraine on the morning of 28th
on an early flight. (He is blogging too
at www.northforkashes.com.) I wasn’t sure how our reunion would be. Would I weep in his arms, would I fall down,
would we argue? We greeted each other
calmly and further cemented the team we have become over our 17 years of
marriage. Stress (as I am sure you know)
can do bad things to a couple. Grief can
rip a marriage apart. As my client Sandra
Champlain reminds me, we all experience grief differently; we are in different
places at different times; and we can easily make each other wrong and have misunderstandings. David and I promise to be gentle with each
other and to be aware of our differences in processing. We promise to be a team.
The morning was spent gathering information, making calls to
insurance, our neighbors, our family and friends and following the news
online.
The Sherriff’s Blog gave this update:
Conditions
on the fire line overnight were relatively stable.
Today's
fire strategy will focus on moving from primarily point protection to
establishing containment.
There
was little growth of the fire overnight. Estimates are still around 4.500 acres
with zero containment. There are still 6,500 on pre-evacuation.
An
urban search and rescue team will go into the fire zone this morning looking
for the missing woman starting at her home and then fanning out from there.
28
homes burned. 2 Heavy air tankers, 1 single engine plane, 2 helicopters from
Buckley AFB + 2 more helicopters will be providing air support as long as
weather conditions allow.
Throughout the day, I email friends and the support
continues to roll in.
I write: we are
ok. We know we will get through this but
everyone we talk to who has ever experienced this says it will be a long uphill
battle. They say the insurance companies
will make efforts to have us give up, that we need to stay strong, that it may
drive us to drink ;-) and that it will take much longer than we think it
will. A new friend who lost her home in
the boulder fire almost 2 years ago is still attempting to get back in her
house. she said plan on 22 mos.... eeeeeks.
we are exhausted and still in shock.
i keep thinking that it couldn't really have happened :-( we are beginning to recreate as much as we
can of receipts. i have been told to
treat it as a full time job too...
We discuss the horrific series of human error that lead to
this disaster and read the news as more is revealed: http://kdvr.com/2012/03/27/official-prescribed-burn-likely-to-blame-investigation-under-way/
We anxiously await for the promised call to do a “site
visit” with a sheriff and a victim advocate.
Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2012 1:33
pm Post subject: 26
people will be given the opportunity to tour the damage. They will need to
provide identification proving they live at the addresses - no media access is
being given at this time.
Finally something to do other than sit around and wait. Our “visit” is scheduled for 10am the next
day. For the rest of the day, we keep up
with the news, play with our dog, inventory the few items I carried out, talk
to our friends, stare into space and attempt to keep calm.
At 4:08, we discover that finally the fire has moved from 0%
containment to 15% contained. The
estimated size up is at 4,140 acres…
Discussions are beginning about the force and fury of this particular
fire. More numbers are circulating: a
1500 foot wall of flames moving at 45 mph consuming 200 feet every 2
minutes…. Not much can survive
this. Extreme heat and speed put this
fire in a category of it’s own. It is
still surreal. We can’t wrap our minds
around it. We cling to a small hope that
the Sherriff is wrong about our home. We
are grateful that I got out alive and mourn the tragic fate that befell our
neighbors. We know who the missing woman
is, even though the news hasn’t said her name.
We have heard the story. Her
husband was out of town too. He reported
he couldn’t reach her. She had been home
alone.
The next morning, 10am doesn’t come quickly enough. We are told we can bring one friend with us
and Adam Mackstaller meets us for the ride in.
We return to the Staples parking lot in Conifer, which is once again
buzzing with activity. Other families
are meeting their “escorts”. I hear a sheriff
asking another family, “What are you expecting to see?” I know they are preparing us all for the
worst. We meet our sheriff and Victim
advocate – both women and both instantly kind.
We discover we will be making the 20-minute journey in the back of a
police car. For those who haven’t ever
had the pleasure of riding in the back of such a vehicle, let me tell you, they
are not designed for comfort. The back
seat is hard plastic and the middle, where I sat wedged between Adam and David,
is a raised hump. When working for the
Victim Advocate Unit for the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, I
had the opportunity to tour the jail.
Both the jail and the back of a cop car are good deterrents for us
non-criminally inclined. I don’t ever
want to spend time in either place when it’s not my choice. To keep us smiling, the Sheriff offers to
play her iPod on the way in. This almost
distracted me from the hunk of hard plastic on which I sat.
They had warned us that if there were any fire flare-ups at
any time we would either not be able to go in or that we might be turned
around. We silently prayed this would
not happen. We needed to see.
As we approached our road, the green, lush forest gave way
to a scorched landscape. Interestingly,
our road was a fire line. On the right
side, the grass was green, the towering pines intact and the Aspens beginning
to wake up from their winter sleep. On
the left side was devastation. The fire
department was still tackling “hot-spots” and “flare-ups” down our road, so we
were sent in another direction. As the
view emerged that way, we could see the extent of the carnage. Our neighbor’s homes burned to the
ground. One family touring their
property as we passed by. We heard the
call go over the radio – they had an outdoor Coi pond and they had discovered
their fish alive! Their beloved donkey
and goat were not so lucky.
Further down, we were sobered as police dogs and men in
yellow still searched for Ann Appel.
What once was one of the most dramatic views in our area, was now a desolated
mess. Power lines down, thousands of
acres of rich forest decimated, beautiful homes smoldering shells.
Finally, we got the ok to go in to view ours.
We traversed the once familiar road yet this time the
landscape was altered. Smoke came out of
hotspots in the roots of trees, open vistas that once were blocked by leaves
and pine needles, and, it seemed, nothing green remained. Black soot covered everything and began to
fill the cramped space of our squad car.
We passed our closest neighbors home (which had been featured on the
news) yet noticed that everything looked worse in real life. Burned to the ground with a few remnants of
chimneys standing.
Needing something to calm our souls, I made a music
request. Can you play “’Standing Outside
the Fire’ by Garth Brooks?”, I said. Our
ever patient and kind deputy agreed, so that was the sound that filled the air
as we made our final turns into our property.
How do I describe the first view? Fortunately we had seen quite a few houses up
close and personal by now so that softened the blow. And, it was far worse than we ever expected
it to be. Rubble, piles of twisted metal
and a glimpse of foundation were what greeted us. We had hoped that at least one of our
outbuildings survived – in particular David’s 18x20 workshop with a lifetime
collection of tools – as well as our storage place for inherited antiques just
waiting for that garage addition to be built.
There was nothing but wreckage.
We wandered and peered into the mess. David began his investigation of the “fire
proof” gun safe, which was still upright but completely charred. (If you have been reading my blogs, you
already know that this last stronghold of hope was dashed after he cut off the
top and found his prized collection beyond repair).
That first visit is a blur.
But for the pictures, it would seem like my waking nightmare. At one point I lost it, sobbing into David’s
arms. Then we continued drifting like
zombies around our precious home.
After a while, we were told we had to go. Ready to go, but feeling ripped away at the
same time; we turned away from our home and returned to the back of the squad
car. Ironically, the brutal backseat was
now more welcoming than the barren vista of what once was our sanctuary.
No comments:
Post a Comment