I’m not a photographer, and by no means did I set out to capture photos of what would eventually turn out to be the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history. All told, 347 homes were destroyed, two people died and many other homes were damaged. Beyond that, I’m sure some beloved pets perished in the inferno. We were some of the fortunate – beyond a little smoke and soot, our home was alright. God surely spared us – there was carnage all around.
I’m pretty “burned out” talking about the fire – everyone has their story. What I’ve documented here is some random iPhone 4S photos that I took during the days and hours the led up to the fire jumping a canyon and literally “exploding” down the Front Range into the Mountain Shadows community.
My first photo was pretty innocuous. I was riding my mountain bike at Ute Valley Park about noon on Saturday, June 23, 2012, when I noticed a small plume of smoke somewhere in Pike National Forest. Not thinking much about it, I snapped a quick photo and tweeted about it at 12:30 p.m.
I kept riding a part of the way around my loop, and when I ascended to a ridge, the fire had gotten significantly larger. The photo was taken about 1:30 p.m., and I posted the following tweet: Oh man…getting bigger…and it’s mid-90s & dry…
During the next couple of days, I snapped a few more iPhone photos, some more menacing looking than others:
My F-150 is backed in and ready to roll – as it eventually did…
Tuesday morning, the air was thick with smoke while walking Dillon, our Black Labrador. Mid-day Tuesday, June 26, we got a pre-evacuation notice. I left the office about 2:15 p.m. and started staging some personal belongings in the garage. I also took a few things, including two of my mountain bikes, down to my neighbor’s nearby warehouse. When I got home between 2:30 and 3:00, this is what I saw from the side yard:
At 4:00 p.m. on June 26, my wife and I watched the routine television briefing conducted by the City, the Forest Service and the Federal firefighting agencies. About 15 minutes into the briefing, my neighbor Kevin knocked on our door and told me to come outside. Unbelievably, the fire had just jumped an entire canyon and was headed down a hillside toward the Mountain Shadows neighborhood. Bear in mind, the folks on the TV briefing did not know that this had happened…yet…
The final two photos were taken right as we were leaving our neighborhood. Note the yellow-brown tint to the sidewalk from the sun filtering through all of the smoke. With the dry conditions and the winds, the hillside was literally incinerating before our eyes!
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