The streets of Louisville Colorado show a bleak new reality for homeowners throughout the western United States.
On December 30 2021 a grass fire by hurricane-force winds burned 1,084 structures in Louisville and the neighboring town of Superior.
The fire went house by house flattening entire neighborhoods. Superior resident Ruby Cervantes was at work when a coworker told her about the fire
“One of the servers was saying US36 had been shut down for a fire and I just assumed it was probably in Lyons or on the way to Estes Park, but like an hour later I saw all the missed calls from family and I just knew,” said Cervantes.
Cervantes lives with her grandparents, one of which requires an oxygen tank after a long battle with COVID-19. While she was stuck outside of the evacuation zone her family members were able to evacuate but did not have time to pack up any possessions.
“I really thought we were about to lose everything, I was watching 9news’s coverage and saw the fire cross over into my neighborhood, I thought it had to be gone,” said Cervantes
Cervantes was fortunate, the fire stopped a few blocks down from hers, but due to smoke damage the family was not able to immediately move back into their house. For four months they lived out of a hotel in Westminster.
The fire set a new state record for its destruction. Doubling the number of structures burned from the previous record-holder the 2013 Black Forest Fire.
Unlike the black forest fire, the Marshal Fire did not occur in deep forest or mountainous terrain, instead, it burned through a suburban community in the Denver metro area.
The fire originated on the western outskirts of the town of Superior at 11 am. Winds of up to 110 miles per hour propelled flames east. By 12:15 it had crossed over from open space into its first neighborhood, Downtown Superior.
Resident Sophia Miranda’s childhood home was in that neighborhood. As neighbors evacuated she was on a beach vacationing with family in Florida
“As we were driving my mom got a call from our neighbor and our neighbor was crying on the phone and he was like Melissa I’m so sorry there’s a fire,” said Miranda.
Seven hours later Miranda would get confirmation that her house had burned down. Her two pet birds had been trapped in the house.
The fire then crossed over a six-lane highway into the town of Louisville reaching houses as far as five miles from the original burn area.
Eventually, the cold front that had caused the winds that carried the fire would bring several inches of snow that would help put the fire out. Leaving a landscape just burned by fire covered in snow.
Miranda could not understand how such an event could occur in a suburban town like hers.
“I was like there is no way. What are the chances this would be happening to me and all of my friends,” said Miranda “I never thought what if my house burns down.”
That sentiment was shared throughout the community and among the scientists who study wildfires and their relationships with human development.
“The marshal fire caught everyone off guard,” said University of Utah Geography Professor Tom Cova, “there’s really no scientist out there who saw something like the marshal fire happening.”
Cova has spent his career studying environmental hazards. Specifically wildfires and how they interact with human development. After the Marshal Fire, he looked at the different factors at play.
Wildfire destruction occurs almost exclusively in what is known as the Wildland Urban Interface. The WUI is where human development is close to, or within natural terrain and flammable vegetation according to CQ Researcher.
Normally a fire will start in deep wilderness and as its size grows it would become a threat to communities in the WUI. But the Marshal Fire defied normal rules.
“If it had started up in Boulder Canyon and then came down and burned the suburbs it would be a little easier to understand,” said Cova. “This one never burned in the wildlands; it just started right on the edge of the suburbs.”
The 2018 updated Colorado Wildfire Risk Assessment found that Half of Colorado is within the WUI. But Cova normally wouldn’t consider Louisville and Superior part of the WUI, and he thinks the scientists who map the interface would agree with him.
The land around the towns normally lack the fuel and fire regime that scientists consider when mapping the WUI.
“It’s kind of like a canary in the coal mine,” said Cova. “The WUI has escaped.”
Cova thinks scientists may need to consider remapping the WUI to include areas that normally wouldn’t have burned but now can because of climate change.
Louisville and Superior normally would have received plenty of precipitation from late October to the end of December. But snow did not fall in Boulder County until November 17th. Tying 2016 for the latest snowfall on record.
As a result of the fall drought, the dried-out landscape provided the perfect fuel for the fire to spread rapidly.
“The marshal fire shows you can turn anything into a wildfire if you just completely shut off the precipitation,” said Cova.
Louisville and Superiors grassland landscape are similar to others in the front range like south Denver suburbs Highlands Ranch, or Parker. A 2017 study by the University of Nebraska found that the area burned by grassland fires has increased by 400% since 1985.
Before the marshal fire, a 2015 study in the journal Risk Management found a general lack of understanding among residents of the WUI over the risk wildfire poses to their communities.
In the aftermath of the Marshal fire, some communities in Colorado have stepped up their plans to prepare for a fire arriving at their doorstep. Colorado Springs has divided its neighborhoods into 200 different evacuation zones.
As other cities prepare Louisville has been struggling to recover. Monarch Highschool returned from winter break six days after the fire, with the first week being optional and noneducational.
The fire which had just taken hundreds of students’ homes and displaced hundreds more was the only thing anyone could think about.
“It came up every day, every class often. Because you drive by it every day,” said monarch language arts teacher Ben Reed.
Reed saw the school come together like it never had before as all the students dealt with their new reality together.
But as teaching returned many students were not able to handle the academic stress and the loss of their house at once.
One student approached Reed, upset that teachers were trying to return class to normal when for her nothing was remotely close to normal.
There were also students who after years of covid isolation, and the aftermath of the fire, simply gave up.
“What I’ve seen more than anything else is kids just being like let me just fall because I’ve already hit the ground more times than I can count.
Monarch High School will return to classes in the fall with three hundred fewer students than the previous year. Students and their families have been scattered across Boulder County and the northern suburbs of Denver as they rebuild or move on.
“When we’re coming back it’s still not normal for a lot of these students, the water still tastes like ash,” said Reed.
MFJS Reporter Spring 2022 