'The people ... remind you why you live here': Fire victims receive donations

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LOUISVILLE, Colo. “Even though I lost my home, I am very blessed that we are all safe, and there's so much love in the community.”

Just four days after leaving her home of 17 years to never see it standing again, Kim Christensen is taking in all the heartache and challenges day-by-day. 

On this day, Monday, January 3, she was one of several families that drove up to an alleyway in the historic downtown area of Louisville. There dozens of volunteers loaded up her family’s car with food, pet supplies, and more. 

“We're just really thankful for anything like this. This is amazing,” said Christensen as she looked around at the piled up donations waiting to be picked up. “We are in an excellent community and everybody is so generous and it … just amazing warms my heart.”

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She and her three kids, her husband, and their dog were some of the hundreds who lost their home on December 30 to a fast-moving fire, now called the Marshall Fire. It destroyed at least 991 structures, damaged another 127, most of which were homes, in Louisville, Superior and unincorporated Boulder county. That leaves hundreds of families like Christensen’s who just had minutes to get their stuff and leave. 

“Well, I work at Avista Hospital,” said Christensen. Smoke from the fires caused the hospital to evacuate and now to close indefinitely. “Out the window I just saw the smoke coming and we were trying to figure out what was going on and there's disaster stuff happening in the hospital. And [I] kept texting my husband, like, ‘Do I need to come home? What's going on?’ And I got home and had 10 minutes to get out.”

She had just enough time to grab a couple of days worth of clothes and anything else she could quickly find. Then her daughter told her their friends up the block still had their two dogs in their home and couldn’t get back into the neighborhood. So Christensen and her family rescued the two dogs just in time. 

“We came back down the block, we saw the fire going into our neighbor's house across the street and into their yard. And I mean at that moment, you just knew,” described Christensen as she took some deep breaths. “It's like a bad movie. Like I want to wake up, you know, in my bed, in my house, and it's not gonna happen.”

A harsh reality that would make it hard for anyone to get some sleep at night. But when something bad happens, as Mr. Rogers said, “Find the helpers.”

“[We] couldn't believe our eyes at the devastation we were seeing, not so far from our own homes and communities, um, and immediately knew that there were gonna be families without items,” said Morgan Seibel the executive director of WeeCycle. It’s a nonprofit that provides new and gently used baby gear and supplies to families in need throughout this state. 

So the organization put a call out asking for donations and as Seibel put it, donations “started showing up on our doorsteps to the point where we couldn't even open our front door.”

Then, WeeCycle got together with other nonprofits it often works with including Conscious Alliance, We Don’t Waste, Period Kits, and Colorado Pet Pantry to provide food, period products, and pet supplies. A unique set of supplies that may not always be thought of when donation drives start up. 

“People had to rush out their doors so fast, especially with this fire. I feel like… just, who knows what they grabbed,” said Seibel. “Baby essentials and women's hygiene supplies and diapers are things that kind of get forgotten sometimes.”

“If that's one thing that we can give these folks that they don't have to worry about, then that's the best that we can do,” said Kara Grano, the board president for Period Kits, an organization that provides menstrual products to anyone who can’t afford them or just needs a little help like at this moment. 

 “I think that's part of what makes it so heavy is that it's like seeing myself in these cars, this could have been any of us,” said Grano who works in Boulder and could see the smoke from her office on the day of the fire. “It's like gut wrenching , you know…I think the only way that you can truly describe it.”

Volunteers help load supplies into Jerry Shaffer's car (far left).

One family that arrived to pick up supplies at this drive, a mom of an almost 11-month-old proudly refused any menstrual products saying she is pregnant. That good news is met with their heavy reality that hasn’t set in yet–their home is gone.

“Just, it's, adrenaline at the moment,” said Jerry Shaffer of the moment he got his family out of the Sagamore neighborhood in Superior. “So you just get as far away as you can, as fast as you can. And then, I don’t know, he said looking at his expecting wife. “It hasn't really set in yet. There's just so much stuff to do, you know?”

Now going through this donation drive and picking up some of these basic supplies for free checks a few things off their to-do list. Plus, a drive like this is one of the many ways Shaffer felt so much community support. 

“All our family is out East, we kind of debated for a second, like, ‘why not just get out of here?’ said Shaffer. “Then, the people that start to reach out, remind you why you live here and why this is home.”


All the organizations that help hand out goods on Monday realize this is a long-term need so many in the Boulder County area will have. So they encourage people who want to find ways to help to go to their websites: 

 

We also have a list of ways you can help or find help if you need here. 


Amanda Horvath is a multimedia producer with Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach her at amandahorvath@rmpbs.org

Julio Sandoval is a multimedia journalist with Rocky Mountain PBS. You can reach him at juliosandoval@rmpbs.org.