Brig's Version of the Waldo Canyon Fire

Up until the day of the fire the biggest thing that we had to worry about was my upcoming trip to Hong Kong and Tokyo.  It was going to be a long trip and we were pretty nervous about it.  Then on Saturday we were holding baseball practice for the Coronado baseball team and looked at the hill and saw a little bit of smoke in the air.

This wasn't much to see, but something said that this could be a big problem.  I remember thinking that I hoped that someone would put it out pretty fast.  Of course that didn't happen.  We went home and a morbid curiousity took over and Kim and I drove up HWY 24 to the Waldo Canyon trail to see what we could see on the fire.  It was scary how fast the fire was growing.



In just two hours the fire had grown this big.  It was something that I had never seen before and I knew at that point that this one was going to be problematic.  My only hope was that our beautiful city would be ok and that the things that made it so nice, Garden of the Gods, Ute Valley Park, and Pikes Peak would escape the mess unharmed.  After being completely amazed by the size of the plume of smoke, we did get some delicious Taco Bell.  I treated myself to a Grilled Stuffed Burrito, which I don't do very often, but felt that it was ok.  Only a few short hours after this, half of the Mtn. Shadows neighborhood was evauated, ironically very few homes of this evacuation were significantly impacted by the fire. 

That night we drove by the church and invited the Richards to come and stay with us until they could go home, we did leave the caveat that our home was only good until we got evacuated.  We just never thought that it would be possible.  The next day church was canceled, which is very rare and we were supposed to go to John's house for Adalee's baby blessing.  After I went to work to grab a few things, I took a few more pictures and decided not to go.  The chances of us being evacuated were really increasing.  It was still amazing that the fire was growing so fast.  The problem was that we were in the midst of five straight record highs for Colorado Springs, all going over 100 degrees.  Since we had moved to the Springs six years ago, we had never had a day over 100 degrees.  Running had become miserable.  We also had basically not had rain in a month, so the conditions were just perfect for the fire.   Here are the images that I took while I was at work.

From the parking lot of work, I have hiked where the plume was many times



Wide view of the plume



I have ran up Queen's Canyon a few times, but for some reason I failed to understand just how close the fire was to the rest of Mtn. Shadows neighborhood.  I thought that there would be no way that it would cross the hill in front which we called the scar.  Regardless, I definitely understood just how big this fire was and that I wasn't going to Ft. Collins.  The smoke literally went miles into the air.  We needed some serious rain before things got out of hand.

For the next two days we just would look at the hills and see the smoke, on Monday night Kim and I drove to Peregrine subdivision and took the following pictures.

Both Kim and I were wondering why Peregrine hadn't been evacuated at this time.  It just seemed liek the fire was very close.  However they weren't evacuated.  So the fact that they weren't evacuated made us feel like everything was going to be ok.  We knew there was a fire, but it was surreal.  Our beautiful city and neighborhood would not be impacted.  We went home and had ice cream.  I was a little annoyed that the smoke was hurting my training for a marathon.  On Tuesday morning, I went running, which was not very smart, since it was already 90 and there was smoke in the air.  My logic was that the smoke really didn't get bad until the afternoon.

Work on Tuesday was pretty much normal.  Everyone was a little bit distracted, but we continued working, there were QREX's that needed to be shipped.  I was in one meeting and we were wondering if we should push out shipments by a week or two due to being short on resources for testing.  That decision was made for us shortly thereafter.   One of my collegues received an evacuation notice during one of our meetings.  We all wished him good luck.  Soon thereafter a few more Agilent people were leaving.  It was just really strange that this was real and that it was going to impact our lives.  About an hour later, I saw on facebook a post from Sister Olsen that said the flames were over the hill and that they were out of there.  This was the first time that I felt that we could lose our house.  Alex Bailes, Joel Woodward, and I walked out to the parking lot and we took the following pictures.

I normally smile, but the homes below the smoke were where friends, co-workers, brothers and sisters, and my family live.  This was not a time to smile.  This was devastation about to happen.  Joel insisted that I get in this picture.

I don't know who this girl is, but that is exactly how I felt when I saw this smoke coming down. 

Denny, one of my collegues at work took this picture.  Literally it looks like the heat from the fire is coming from the inside of the mountain nto from the trees on the outside.  This is what 2500-3000 degrees looks like



This is one more picture of what was a mountainside view



What was ironic about this morning is that we were having our Durango fixed for its A/C, at 2pm, I told the car dealership that I didn't need to pick up the car because we were unaffected by the fire.  The images above were taken at 4pm.  We were being evacuatedf and our car was stuck at the mechanics...  I had to recruit Alex to bring me home.  He did.  He then got to ride with Natalie to Joel's house.  Alex later would say that Natalie never really quit talking the whole trip.  Kim called at this point and I told here I was on my way home. 

Alex then brought me home and everyone, including the Richards who were still staying with us packed up and evacuated.  It ended up that having the Richards with us was really lucky as they had a truck.  We loaded it up.  In the chaos that was happening, I left my winter running gear.  Luckily our home would end up ok, because that would have been sad to lose those.  After about twenty minutes, we locked up the house, it was full of smoke and left.  I did have to tell Kim that we needed to go.  Also a jewelry box fell out of the car and for the first time in Zach's life he heard me curse.  It was only the other word for poop, so I thougth that was pretty good.

As we left all the cars were lined up from our neighborhood.  I knew the fire was coming down Mtn. Shadows, but I was praying that it didn't catch in Ute Valley.  If it caught in Ute Valley Park our house would be stuck between two fires and we were in trouble.

Joel took this picture of Agilent at the exact time we were leaving from our home.



The video shows us leaving the neighborhood.  As we finally turned onto Garden of the Gods, we saw the Forrest Service fire trucks heading into our neighborhood.  Kim says this is what made her know for sure that things were really bad.



The fire trucks were going in



These were some of the real heros.  It was Armageddon in our neighborhood and yet they went right there.  You can't see him, but there was a policeman in the middle of the intersection directing traffic.  He didn't have time to get a mask yet.  That was a true hero as well.  The city would later rally around them.

We arrived at Joel's about an hour later.  Traffic was all going away from Mtn. Shadows.  I drove the Richards truck, it didn't have air conditioning.  It was 100 degrees and no way to roll a window down or smoke would take over the truck.  It was hot.  I actually think that it got so hot the ignition on their truck started to smoke by the time we got to Joel's house.  When we arrived, Joel had ordered pizza.  We greatly appreciated his hospitatility.  We then watched the news and read the Mtn. Shadows facebook page to learn anything that we could possibly learn. 

We spent four hours in front of the tv, but then a crew from news channel five showed the following picture on the television:

You can see the church, our beautiful churc down below.  It was ok.  The fire came as close as Centennial, but never crossed it!  Our neighborhood was ok.  In this image you can actually see our house and all is good.  We were very grateful to the news for showing this picture.  At this point we were worried about smoke damage, but most of our worries were now focused on our friends and churchmembers.  Unfortunately many of them would not be so lucky. 

Here are some more images of the fire,which were in the paper and online.

This was one fo the hardest working men there was.  He rode in the hellicopter all day, trying to do what he could to help.

Just amazing how big this fire was

This was a picture of the helicopter's bucket dropping water on the fire.  It was really just a drop on the fire.

At about ten o'clock at night, it was very clear that Mtn. Shadows would not be ok.  However, I never would have expected that over 350 homes would be destroyed in a matter of five hours.  From our ward, the McCombers and Morgans would lose their homes.  Many of our ward members would be impacted though.

The next day and for the next several days we went to Cheyenne.  I think both Kim and I felt a great sense of loss.  We would just get sad out of the blue.  On Friday we came back to the Springs for Jeff Courtier's funeral.  While it was sad to lose him, seeing all our friends again was a great relief.

On Saturday we came back to the Springs and were allowed back into our homes!  My Mom came with us and we were amazed at how little damage was actually done to our home.  We were so happy.  However we got to see the first remnants of the devastation.  The hill to Centennial was burned completely.  We also saw numerous homes that were once there, were no longer there.

I will write in a different post about telling the firefighters thank you.  I just know that Heavenly Father protected the church and our home.  While many friends lost their homes, the community rallied and we are stronger because of it.  It is strange to have been one of the poeple that is on the news as one of 32,000 evacuees, but it did happen.