A ‘new normal:’ Two years after Boulder County’s Fourmile Fire, recovery varies [Daily Camera, Boulder, Colo.]

Sept. 01--The ground around Andi O'Conor's house is alive -- green, lush and bursting with life.

But throughout her property on Left Fork Road stand the charred trunks and branches of gnarled trees once consumed by flames, a reminder of the devastating wildfire that roared through the foothills west of Boulder two years ago.

The Fourmile Fire -- until this summer, Colorado's most destructive -- torched 169 homes and scorched 6,200 acres on Labor Day, Sept. 6, 2010.

The road to normalcy is represented by the 29 homeowners, including O'Conor, who have rebuilt houses where they once stood and another 29 who have pulled permits to do so. It also encompasses families like the Stareks, who happily decided that the time had come to leave mountain living behind and start anew somewhere else.

But the impacts of the Fourmile Fire are slower to fade for others, such as Howard Wishner, unable to complete the reconstruction of his destroyed home on Fred Road because of depleted funds. Or Bari Campbell, who waited 18 months for a settlement from her insurance company while she and her family bounced around to multiple dwellings in search of a permanent home. The nomadic family will soon move to its fourth address since the fire, which claimed their house on Wild Turkey Trail.

"What is normal when you lost everything you knew?" Campbell asked. "Who knows what our new normal will be?"

'This is a marathon'

"New normal" is heard a lot these days in the Fourmile Fire burn zone, from survivors as well as those who have been helping them get back on their feet. It's a term that captures the notion that while the most intense recovery efforts may be winding down, the Fourmile Fire still looms large.

"This is a marathon, not a sprint," Fourmile Fire recovery manager Garry Sanfacon said.

Concerns today, he said, go beyond those still dealing with insurance issues and uncertain living spaces. The threat that the burn zone -- stripped of vegetation and prone to erosion -- could be inundated by floodwaters after a heavy rain continues to haunt mountain residents and emergency responders. There have been five or six measurable debris flows on roads in the burn area since September 2010, and 2 to 3 inches of rain in less than an hour could spell real trouble for areas such as Ingram Gulch, Wagonwheel Gap, Fourmile Canyon Creek and Salina.

"They were traumatized by the fire; now they're traumatized each summer by potential rain events," Sanfacon said. "For the next three to four years, if we get the right amount of rain in the right location for the right duration, we could get significant flooding."

And the threat of a new fire remains a constant. Just last week, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle ordered the second fire ban of the season for the western part of the county. There was only 0.36 inches of moisture in Boulder in August, compared to an average of 1.9 inches for the month.

All of that uncertainty has wrought seldom-discussed damage on those living in the burn zone. Amy Hardy, mayor of Gold Hill and Fourmile Fire recovery resource coordinator for Foothills United Way, said 120 mountain residents have taken advantage of mental health vouchers made available since the fire. Requests for the vouchers "spiked" after the Flagstaff Fire earlier this summer, Hardy said, an indication of how easily ongoing psychological challenges can be triggered by new stresses.

"It was a pretty scary summer for us," she said. "I think a lot of people were wondering once again why they're living up here."

'This is home'

O'Conor understands that trepidation, having wondered a few times during her rebuild why she decided to stay. Dealing with insurance, dealing with architects, dealing with contractors, dealing with the county's building approval process all took more time and energy than she first thought.

"It would have been so much easier to take the insurance payout and buy a condo in Boulder," she said. "I just forged ahead at the beginning and when I got midway through I said, 'This is really hard.' I mean I'd never picked out a paint sample."

But being on the edge of the burn, where the damage from the fire seemed less all-encompassing, made the decision to build where her old home once stood easier. More important, O'Conor knew after 20 years of living in Boulder's foothills that she was inextricably a part of the area.

"This is home -- I love Boulder, I love Sugarloaf," she said.

Now O'Conor, 55, is proud owner of an 1,800-square-foot house -- down from 2,500 square feet -- that runs completely on solar power with no furnace or gas line, relying instead on a wood stove and electric baseboard for heat.

"I expect to never have a utility bill again in my life," she said last week, as electricians installed the remaining outlets in her modern kitchen and metalworkers finished off a dog run.

She moved in nearly two months ago, after having lived most of the past two years in a cottage at Chautauqua.

O'Conor credits Boulder County for its willingness to smooth out the rebuilding process, even if she said it took officials a few months to really engage with fire victims. She said she got her building permit in just three days.

Boulder County Land Use Director Dale Case said the county waived the more onerous site plan review process for Fourmile rebuilds, allowing victims to replace what they had with a minimal amount of bureaucratic interference. That waiver expires at the end of this month, but Case said his department would consider extending it for an additional year on a case-by-case basis.

So far, he said, the county has been happy with how people are choosing to rebuild in the burn zone, with new homes boasting a Home Energy Rating System 49 percent higher on average than those that were there before.

In addition to the 58 building permits that have been issued to fire victims so far, up to 30 more Fourmile Fire homeowners appear ready to submit rebuilding plans to the county, Case said. If all those projects are completed as planned, it would mean that more than half of what was destroyed by the wildfire will be replaced.

'Sense of disappointment'

That is little solace to Wishner, who rebuilt 80 percent of his home on Fred Road before running out of money. He said he found himself entangled in a knot of problems with his insurance company, with contractors and with the county before finally shutting down construction earlier this year.

"Everything I thought with this process, I was wrong," he said. "There was a sense of disappointment, with the builders taking advantage of the customer and the insurance company electing not to underwrite the full cost of replacement."

To start with, Wishner acknowledged, he was underinsured. The new building materials that were required by the county were far more expensive than what he had anticipated. Then, he got wildly inaccurate bids from his contractors, eventually leaving him $100,000 short of getting the home finished.

Those looking to rebuild, Wishner said, need to go into it fully prepared and with eyes wide open.

"If you determine you are going to rebuild, it's critically important you surround yourself with experts who can tell you before you put that first nail in the wood what it's going to cost to fully replace the house," he said. "It's a full-time job. Can you give it that time, that emotion, that energy?"

Last month, Wishner, 60, moved to Florida to take a job there, putting his unfinished home on the market. He doesn't know if it will sell or if he will eventually return to the place he lived for six years, where views as far out as Denver International Airport were not uncommon on clear days.

"For me, it was a dream come true," Wishner said. "It hurt me to have that for-sale sign put in front of my house."

Battle with insurance

Campbell doesn't even have a home in front of which to plant a sign. The yoga instructor, her husband and two children have been hopscotching around Boulder since their home of 10 years burned to the ground in the Fourmile Fire. They've lived in a condo, a townhouse, an apartment, and now they're getting ready to move to a sublet at the Peloton in Boulder.

"Because we've had all these moves, we're kind of unsettled people," she said.

Campbell, 51, said it took an "arduous, horrible" 18 months to get paid by her insurance company. Like many other Fourmile Fire victims, her home on Wild Turkey Trail was underinsured. To take matters worse, Campbell said, her family wasn't allowed back up to their home the day the blaze broke out, making their loss from the fire total.

Accounting for everything her family owned has been laborious, with her insurance company double-checking every item, right down to the type of windows that were on the home.

"It was the biggest battle we've ever had," Campbell said.

Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, said Campbell's travails with insurance were far from unique. The California-based policyholder advocacy group, which held half a dozen community meetings in the months after the Fourmile Fire, attempted to provide guidance to survivors on how to deal with insurance companies and policy claims.

Bach gives the industry a B in terms of its willingness to make payments on claims submitted after the Fourmile Fire, but a D in terms of providing adequate coverage in the first place.

"A policy in a disaster gets road-tested to the extreme," she said. "And there is a heightened awareness that the quality of homeowner insurance protection didn't hold up in the way it should have."

Insurance companies, she said, should be far more forthright about regularly updating homeowner policies as property values change and replacement costs rise. Many Fourmile victims, she said, simply assumed their homeowner policy would cover them in the case of a complete loss.

"If you don't know you have the responsibility (to update your policy), you're not going to do anything about it," Bach said.

Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association, admits that there were some delays getting Fourmile Fire victims their settlements, but she said the responsibility for an updated policy that reflects today's costs and considerations rests primarily with the policyholder.

The industry, Walker said, will continue to direct its agents to be more proactive in terms of keeping policies current, but doing so doesn't necessarily speak to the larger issue of providing adequate coverage to areas that lie in danger zones.

"How do we insure these higher-risk areas without making insurance so prohibitively expensive that people can't afford it?" she asked.

Fire provides 'fresh start'

Higher risk is exactly what drew Alice and Karel Starek to the foothills above Boulder decades ago. They lived in a 3,500-square-foot house on Rim Road for seven years before the Fourmile Fire burned it to the ground.

"We liked the fact that there would be blizzards and our driveway would be shut for two weeks," Karel Starek said. "It's nature, it's wild and you can't control it."

That prospect of subservience to the elements took a dramatic turn on Labor Day in 2010, when the Stareks received an official emergency call that a fire had been sparked in the bone-dry hills near their home. Karel Starek hopped on his bike to grab some shovels and help dig a fire break.

But it was too late. Flames had raced up a gulch near their home and, within minutes, engulfed their neighbor's house. Alice Starek grabbed her favorite sweater and sandals and bolted down the hill.

When the couple and their three children returned to their property, they were shocked by what they saw.

"It looked like a bomb hit it," Alice Starek said.

Unlike the many Fourmile Fire victims who saw the destruction of their home as a bitter end, however, the Stareks saw the loss caused by the fire as a new beginning.

Just weeks before the fire, the family had purchased 27 acres on 75th Street and was trying to figure out how to finance the construction of several straw-bale structures and a demonstration slow-food sustainable farm on the property. After their mountain home burned to the ground, the Stareks received an insurance settlement that allowed them to move ahead with their agricultural plans.

"The fire cleared the obstacles for us to move forward with our lives," Karel Starek said.

The family is in the midst of building the straw-bale houses and plans to move a flock of 50 to 100 sheep onto the property in October. Turkeys pecked around the property on a cloudy day last week, as construction workers shouted instructions at one another.

"You don't get a fresh start very often," said Karel Starek, sitting on a wooden chair he built by hand that escaped the fire unharmed.

The Fourmile Fire, Alice Starek said, had the unforeseen effect of simplifying her life by removing the countless possessions she had accumulated over the years, while at the same time revealing a heartwarming generosity in the people around her.

"By cleaning the clutter, it sharpened my ability to see the things that are important to us," she said. "I didn't know how to ask for help before the fire. I asked people to cook us dinner, and they did. It opened my heart in a beautiful way."

Progress slow but steady

That's the kind of collaboration and support the mountain community west of Boulder may still need, as the threat of fire and flood continues to keep everyone slightly off-balance.

Mike Chard, director of the Boulder Office of Emergency Management, said the Intermountain Alliance Group and the Mountain Mayors group lend solidarity to the community by making safety and mutual aid a core focus.

Meanwhile, 60 weather watchers throughout the burn area monitor for rainstorms and other weather events while newly installed rain gauges alert authorities to impending flash floods. Checkdams that have been installed help control water flow in the burn zone, and frequent clearing of culverts ensures that water doesn't back up onto roads.

"We feel like it's gotten better," Chard said.

At the ecological level, things continue to slowly improve as well, though Boulder County Parks and Open Space senior plant ecologist Claire DeLeo warns that recovery of the forest understory can take up to five years, and the establishment of healthy new trees can take decades. But she said mulch and seed drops this year and last year have been a good start, helping stabilize the ground and allowing for new growth.

"I'm seeing much better recovery this year compared to last year," DeLeo said. "A lot more wildflower blooms and the pollinators moving back in."

Both Sanfacon's and Hardy's jobs are due to be scaled back later this year, as the immediate needs of survivors subside. Sanfacon said he has been receiving noticeably fewer calls and emails from survivors as the Fourmile Fire has fallen further into the past.

All that gives O'Conor the crazy hope that she can soon settle into her brand-new home with its age-old views and recapture what was once there -- or perhaps what has become the "new normal."

"Now that it's done and I'm back, there's no other place I'd want to be on Earth," she said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer John Aguilar at 303-473-1389 or [email protected].

Fourmile Fire

Acres burned: 6,181

Insured losses: $217 million

Homes destroyed: 169

Building permits pulled for rebuild: 58

Homes rebuilt: 29

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