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Evacuees of Calwood Fire Seek Permanent Homes Year Later

The wildfire started October 17, and scorched roughly 10,106 acres, until its containment Nov. 14 — making it the largest wildfire in Boulder County's history.

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(TNS) - Charlie Pellerin looked outside exactly a year ago today to see a column of thick, black smoke stretching into the sky and barreling down a hillside just west of his home.

Pellerin and his wife, Junko Yokota-Pellerin, were at their Foothills Ranch Drive house the afternoon of Oct. 17, 2020, when they received a reverse 911 call telling them to evacuate.

"I just looked out and saw the black smoke coming, and I just said, 'This is different'," Pellerin said. "If I thought the house was going to burn down, I probably would have taken 10 minutes and picked up the passports and the money. I didn't think the house was going to burn down."

Pellerin and his wife fled without grabbing any of their belongings. They left behind models of missions Pellerin had managed in his three decades working at NASA; photos and furniture dating back to both couple's childhoods — all of it vanquished by the flames.

The wildfire, which sparked that Saturday near the Cal-Wood Education Center in Jamestown, would be named the Calwood Fire. It scorched roughly 10,106 acres, until its containment Nov. 14 — making it the largest wildfire in Boulder County's history. The wildfire damaged 27 properties and destroyed 20 homes; among them was the Pellerin home. The blaze reduced the couple's house of about 18 years to a 3-foot pile of gray rubble.

Sitting on the back porch of his temporary Lafayette home on a recent Thursday morning, Pellerin remembered the day he and his wife evacuated, leaving their house and everything in it behind. As Sunday marks the first year since the fire carved a destructive path through Boulder County, those who lost their homes recalled the day their lives changed drastically. Looking ahead, they asked for the county to brace for more disaster.

"This is going to be the new norm," Pellerin said. "There's not a thing you can do about it, except make the structure defendable. There are going to be more wildfires like this that are going to be hails of embers."

'A real fire drill'

For the Pellerins' neighbor, Courtney Walsh, that warm, windy fall day was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday with her family.

That afternoon, Walsh and her husband, Todd, and their two children, Taylor, then 10, and Wyatt, then 7, were having lunch in downtown Boulder.

A friend who was in north Boulder texted them just before 1 p.m. to tell them he saw a large smoke plume near the area where their home was on Foothills Ranch Drive — a street just west of U.S. 36, near Nelson Road.

Not long after their friend's warning, as the family was heading to their house, Courtney Walsh said the Boulder Office of Emergency Management texted them to evacuate.

"When we were driving, I turned to my kids and said, 'This is a fire drill, a real fire drill,'" Walsh said. "They were kind of scared, but they sort of had marching orders."

Leading up to the Calwood Fire, the family already had endured falling ash and drifting smoke from the Cameron Peak Fire, which was burning in Larimer and Jackson counties and would become the largest wildfire in the state's history, scorching 208,913 acres, the Denver Post reported.

"It certainly was all very unsettling, so it wasn't too much of a shock that we would be dealing with more fire where we lived," Walsh said. "It was a shock obviously (though) to be evacuated. We had lived out at Foothills Ranch for six years and never been evacuated."

Reaching their home, the family spent about 15 to 20 minutes getting their two dogs, Cooper and Railay, and their daughter's two rabbits, Cookie and Oreo, into the car. Walsh ripped pictures off the walls, while her kids filled their suitcases.

"I also grabbed a bag of clothes ... but I was not thinking that I would never be there again," Walsh said.

At the time, Walsh said her parents had been living with them temporarily, while they were in between selling and moving into a new home. That meant everything from Walsh's childhood home was also inside their Foothills Ranch home.

After leaving their home behind, the family first drove to a friend's house in Boulder to wait for more information. That evening they checked into The St. Julien Hotel & Spa, which was allowing evacuees to stay there with their pets. The family already had reservations there because they had planned to celebrate Walsh's birthday later that month with a staycation.

At the hotel the family scoured the internet for updates. They checked out local news sites and monitored social media. Walsh said that about 6 p.m. they stumbled on a National Weather Service photo. It was their house. When she zoomed in, she could see the roof was on fire.

Walsh said it was about two days later when the Office of Emergency Management contacted them to let them know their house was a total loss.

Pellerin and his wife also evacuated to a hotel in Boulder. Like the Walsh family, they searched for information about what was happening to their home. Pellerin said his phone, which allowed him to monitor his home's solar panels, showed him that the panels had gone dead about 4 p.m. He said he guessed the heat had destroyed them. Then, about 11 p.m. a friend reached out to Pellerin to say they had seen the couple's home on fire.

Searching for a landing

The Walsh family now lives in a rental home in Boulder, but for months they drifted from Chautauqua cabins to hotel rooms and back.

The coronavirus pandemic added layers of difficulty for the Walsh family.

"You can't see your friends. You can't hug your friends — it just makes something like that even worse," Walsh said, "nor could we really live with other friends because of COVID."

Pellerin and his wife faced a similar ordeal. After evacuating to a hotel room in Boulder, they moved to a neighborhood in Arvada, before moving to a rental house in Lafayette because they wanted to be closer to Boulder. They will move again this month to a rental in Boulder.

"I won't say the moving is easy — it's not," Pellerin said. "It's physically and emotionally stressful."

Rebuilding

Pellerin has a picture of what Foothills Ranch Drive looked like before it was destroyed by the fire. The house faced east, and its multiple decks offered a chance to take in the surrounding open space.

"We fell in love (with that house) the minute we saw it," Pellerin said. "It was love at first sight. We moved into that home the spring of 2002, and fire was not a consideration."

The year Pellerin and his wife moved in, Pellerin became concerned about dry conditions. He cleared a roughly 50-foot perimeter of grass and low-hanging tree branches around his home. Two firebreaks, a clearing created to eliminate inflammable items, were also in place. But, he said, mitigation efforts today need to factor in more than vegetation. The Calwood Fire, he said, wasn't a typical ground fire.

"This was a wall of embers," Pellerin said. "That's the same problem we had in California. That's because when we get this combination of extremely combustible material and high wind, it can't be stopped."

Pellerin and his wife plan to return to Foothills Ranch Drive. They are working to rebuild a fire-resistant home made from rocks and cement sheathing, complete with steel decks. Pellerin hopes the home will be ready for them to move into in about a year.

Coping a year later

Walsh said her family is doing their best to move on but continues to process the tragedy and navigate insurance deadlines and questions about where they will go next.

"I wouldn't wish this process on my worst enemy," Walsh said.

Meanwhile, her children have been working through the grief. Her son recently showed her a drawing he made of a house on fire. Her daughter is very minimalist with stuff and is careful to donate anything that's unnecessary, keeping only six items of clothing in her closet.

What Walsh wants, as today marks one year since the tragedy, are more measures to protect people from wildfires.

"It's not going to get better," Walsh said. "There's going to be more fires as the climate warms."

Walsh said more mitigation efforts and resources, training and better wages provided to firefighters would be a start. She praised U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse's work to establish a 21st century Civilian Conservation Corps to help mitigate wildfire danger and provide housing and mental health resources for federal wildland firefighters.

She asked homeowners also to take a closer look at their insurance policies and take time to understand what their fire policy looks like and what it covers. Walsh advised those who live in the mountains or areas vulnerable to fire to create an evacuation plan during a time when they are calmly able to think through the things they would want to take with them. And, she said, people need to take evacuation orders seriously.

Something that brought Walsh comfort in the wake of the tragedy was Chautauqua's "Art in the Park" project, which repurposed trees burned from the fire into benches. The benches were decorated by artists and auctioned to raise money for Chautauqua's wildfire prevention efforts.

"For us, it's been a way to heal," Walsh said. "You see art made out of the burned fire wood — it's just nice. Definitely mitigate and remember. It's easy to forget about things, especially if it didn't happen to you, but it's serious. It's really devastating."

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