Help Gwen, John, & Kids Rebuild - Marshall Fire
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Our home burned down on December 30, 2021.
We thought that house was going to be our forever home. We got married there, in front of the old barn and train car. Our blended family started really becoming a family there. Our dogs loved every inch of the land as much as we did.
Like many people, we spent much of the pandemic gardening and nesting. We built up a home gym, finally got the sizes of Pyrex containers we needed for everyone's lunches, and decided we had "enough" Christmas ornaments and coffee mugs, for a while.
The morning of the fire, we saw the kids' trampoline get blown up into the trees, and smelled smoke while eating brunch. We checked to make sure the fireplace flue was closed, and looked at the Daily Camera for reports of fires. (The fire in North Boulder was listed, but not the Marshall Fire, yet). At first, we thought that the strong winds were just stirring up the ashes in the fireplace from our cozy fire the prior evening. We went outside to pick up the recycling that had blown down (again) and saw the encroaching smoke. I picked up one more piece of recycling, looked up at the sky again, and realized that the smoke was getting really close, really fast. We rushed back inside, pivoted on our feet, thinking "that is replaceable, that is replaceable, that is replaceable." We didn't even know where to start grabbing things, and knowing we couldn't take all the photo albums, we took nothing at all. But, apparently panic brain doesn't talk to panic stomach. Not knowing when we'd eat again, I paused to eat my avocado toast, take one more sip of coffee, and then rushed out to the car with the dog. John drove away first, and I realized that I had once decided that if my house was ever on fire, I'd take a quilt my mom made for me. I ran back inside, grabbed the quilt, and drove away. I almost rear-ended John driving out on our road because there was so much smoke that I couldn't see him stopped in the middle of the road. We were so grateful to know the roads by heart, because there were no visible landmarks around us. Only a few blocks away, we drove into blue skies, with fist-sized chunks of embers falling down onto our cars.
We thought that house was going to be our forever home. We got married there, in front of the old barn and train car. Our blended family started really becoming a family there. Our dogs loved every inch of the land as much as we did.
Like many people, we spent much of the pandemic gardening and nesting. We built up a home gym, finally got the sizes of Pyrex containers we needed for everyone's lunches, and decided we had "enough" Christmas ornaments and coffee mugs, for a while.
The morning of the fire, we saw the kids' trampoline get blown up into the trees, and smelled smoke while eating brunch. We checked to make sure the fireplace flue was closed, and looked at the Daily Camera for reports of fires. (The fire in North Boulder was listed, but not the Marshall Fire, yet). At first, we thought that the strong winds were just stirring up the ashes in the fireplace from our cozy fire the prior evening. We went outside to pick up the recycling that had blown down (again) and saw the encroaching smoke. I picked up one more piece of recycling, looked up at the sky again, and realized that the smoke was getting really close, really fast. We rushed back inside, pivoted on our feet, thinking "that is replaceable, that is replaceable, that is replaceable." We didn't even know where to start grabbing things, and knowing we couldn't take all the photo albums, we took nothing at all. But, apparently panic brain doesn't talk to panic stomach. Not knowing when we'd eat again, I paused to eat my avocado toast, take one more sip of coffee, and then rushed out to the car with the dog. John drove away first, and I realized that I had once decided that if my house was ever on fire, I'd take a quilt my mom made for me. I ran back inside, grabbed the quilt, and drove away. I almost rear-ended John driving out on our road because there was so much smoke that I couldn't see him stopped in the middle of the road. We were so grateful to know the roads by heart, because there were no visible landmarks around us. Only a few blocks away, we drove into blue skies, with fist-sized chunks of embers falling down onto our cars.
We learned that our house burned down about 20 hours later, after an agonizing night watching the news and looking at satellite imagery.
Since then, we've stayed with numerous friends, and have landed at a friend's beautiful home in East Boulder while she's on vacation. We put in an offer on a house in this same neighborhood, and it's been accepted! We are closing on the new house on February 2nd, with help from my parents for the downpayment. We have been so busy filing insurance claims (we were underinsured, but did have $26,000 of insurance that we've already received because we were obviously underinsured), talking to FEMA, National Geographic, the Community Foundation, the federal government to replace passports, shopping for furniture... and we've been grieving, and processing the fear and the loss since then. We're getting there.
Thank you for your love and support.
Any money that we don't need, we will give to the general emergency fund for the Marshall Fire, or to the two other families who lost their homes at the Thorne Nature Preschool where Gwen teaches.
Gwen and John
Any money that we don't need, we will give to the general emergency fund for the Marshall Fire, or to the two other families who lost their homes at the Thorne Nature Preschool where Gwen teaches.
Gwen and John
Organizer
Gwen Tenney
Organizer
Louisville, CO