Collins Family
#MarshallFire Update
March 30th, 2022
D-Day +90
We have made it to a critical point on the family timeline: 90 days since the fire.
Quick links to jump around the update:
90-days
NCAR Fire this last weekend
Lows & Highs
Spring!
Insurance Update
Rebuild Update
Kids Update
April East Coast visit
Summer
New Photos
New D-Day stories to read from kids and Gmom
90-days
Every therapist, trauma recovery agent, and helpful friend with a computer has told us that this particular day was coming. It is supposed to mark a period of suffering that shifts from grief and shock and the realness of the event as if it happened today, to more of a long-term "awareness suffering" that you engage for many months until the anniversary date of the incident. And at that point, they say, the one-year+ mark, if you have hung on to yourself & your family well enough, outlasted the 10,000 demons, and made it through the seven-levels of the candy cane forest, you might start to feel like this all happened in the past.
But right now, we're in the belly of the whale, awaiting our "Road of Trials".
How are we doing at the 90-day waypoint? Whats the vibe check?
100% awful. We are still a mess. Not ourselves. We continue to figure out who each of us are in our new confines, in our new thoughts, in our lack of completion on all the thoughts and endeavors born from our old life and old house. Incomplete is a great explanation in one word.
NCAR Fire, no thanks, not needed, WTF, people.
It did not help that another wildfire happened this past weekend on March 26th, only 3 miles from our current home (labeled as the #NCARFire). We watched it, from our kitchen and sidewalk, with intense feelings swirling around in our bodies, haphazard, just like the billowing smoke in our southern sky. If the wind shifted, us and a city of people would have been evacuated, 100,000+ people. As it was, we had several friends and their families evacuated from South Boulder where the NCAR Fire was threatening 8,000 homes, about 19,000+ people. All I could say to myself in reading their updates about taking their belongings and asking for prayers was, "good luck." The helplessness and feeling of dread, while already having lost our home, was a new low.
Thankfully, the winds were not as fierce as our tragic day. The NCAR Fire has since been reduced to nothing (its been 72+ hours and moisture rolled in today, 90% contained), NO HOUSES or structures were lost, and all our friends are back in their homes, in their beds, counting their blessings (and probably reviewing their evac results, insurance policies, mitigation energy, etc.)
Unfortunately, the land that was burned is really tough to think about. One of our favorite hikes, the very first one we did with our new Colorado friends back in 2006, was torched, along with the most beautiful 190+ acres of foothill forest and terrain. Just gorgeous, now burned.
LOWS & HIGHS
With all the grief of the last 90-days, there have been some highlights and a few spots of adventure for our family, just enough to dull the pain, remove the depressing thoughts for a spell, and create new memories. Avalanche hockey games & special group skates on the ice at Ball Arena, random & extremely thoughtful gifts from our friends and family (like the hand-painted guitar from Dave Chmil & Gathering Flowers), hockey season finales for both kids, and lots of little moments, too.
The location we are occupying is opening other things up for us, especially with the better weather. Walked out of our temp home in Downtown Boulder last Friday night, went just a few blocks to see my friend's band play for free in the lobby of a posh hotel, right on our street. Took Gina out to walk/eat on Pearl St. followed by a stroll to the Boulder Theater to see a band, before walking home. We are a music family, and we intend to see live music in downtown as much as possible while we are stationed there.
SPRING!
The next phase of our lives happens to coincide with the change over to Spring, and we are ready for nicer weather. FUN FACT: We had 70 and 80 degree days leading up to the December 30th, 2021 Marshall Fire, with NO SNOW prior to that. It snowed 48 hours after the fire, and then Old Man Winter really decided to kick some ass for 12 weeks, STRAIGHT. The snowiest beginning to a year in Colorado history commenced. We had 1.445 snow storms per week since the fire.
With no garage anymore, and a cold, circa 1900 brick house that you have to keep the taps dripping at anything below 30 degrees, our winter was worse than any of the others in our 16 years out here, even year #2 with the multiple 3-foot snowstorms. Turns out though, cold is not the biggest problem when you don't have your life anymore, it is but a circumstance, and we adapted begrudgingly.
INSURANCE UPDATE
State Farm continues to receive lots of formal complaints to the Colorado DOI for shorting customers in their claim estimates and processes. We continue to dive deep into their matrix of requirements to engage our claim. As predicted, the initial State Farm estimate we received on cost to rebuild was woefully under the actual cost it will take to rebuild, not by a few thousands or tens of thousands, but by 100's of thousands of dollars.
We are working through the available latitudes in this process, nothing is certain other than we will be presenting State Farm with the actual costs via the home builder we have temporarily selected, in an effort to realize more of the policy limits that they have shorted us on. It is standard game from what we have found out, that State Farm uses software and practices to LOW-BALL your home's value, in every corner.
If you want to hear more about our understandings of the State Farm client-side / claim process, and learn how "fake Jake is" (his name is Kevin, met him on a video shoot, nice guy), hit me up directly. I erased my rant paragraph here to keep the direction of the intended update, and not swim you through an eddy pool of issues.
REBUILD UPDATE
Yes, we want to / have to / need to rebuild.
And, WHEN WE DO, we are dedicating an entire wall of our home to all our supporters. Your names & images & representations will be built into the materials of a wall in our home, most likely the biggest and best wall on our main floor. Your names and messages will be written into the studs, onto the walls before paint, and then we will keep that wall decorated with your images, words, names, and anything else connected to the support you have sent our way. I am dreaming of seeing this wall completed one day, having a long quiet moment with it, and then watching as the soul of our home returns again, day by day.
In order to realize any of the previous trajectory we were on to support our kids through high school and college, give ourselves a future when the kids are grown, and have a home for any of the years we have left, we need to rebuild and see our neighborhood come back to life. Without that, we are lost. Our timeline is out of sync already and the path of reduced effort (i.e. not rebuilding, selling the lot, moving away) is a path of reduced power. That is not for us, we are too full of good power to reduce ourselves and give in.
Remington Homes is our selected builder, for now. We have learned to "keep everything on the table" and allow for circumstances to arise and dissipate as the system figures itself out. These home builders vying for everyone's business are in the same boat: they have never re-built in a local government that has suffered a massive loss and now requires patience and timing. Anyone that says they can do it better than the next guy (or cheaper) is talking out of their arse. There is still a sea of unknowns at this juncture.
KIDS UPDATE
The setback this last weekend with the now extinguished NCAR Fire renewed the hyperventilating tendency for Keller as his trauma response. I got angry at things, Gina paced the sidewalk, porch, computer, and kitchen windows to monitor the stress, and Sylvie took pictures and hugged each of us.
The reality that these two kids are living in has taken a severe turn towards adulthood and adult concepts of safety, security, and even relationships. I feel that they are tuned in most of the time, observing when necessary, and then testing out their adult feedback system with their own adventurous decisions, conversations, and attention towards their friends. Long way of saying, we have two young teenagers (even though Sylvie is turning 12 on April 23rd).
You can read Sylvie's perspective on the evacuation day and Keller's harrowing story on the new "Our Stories" page, just click those hyperlinks in this sentence to jump over there. My mother, Judy, wrote her play-by-play, too.
APRIL EAST COAST VISIT
To all our friends in Connecticut, we are coming to see you.
Join us for an evening, 6pm on Thursday April 21st, @ the new Café Amici location in Hamden.
It is about to be 10 years since Anders Pedersen passed away, let's celebrate him, and us.
VIBRAZIONE ELEVATE
- An evening for good vibes, celebration, & community
- Anders, Stephen, and Mike all worked & cooked together at the old Leon’s location that Amici has now moved to, it is a very special place
- We will have a short ceremony around 7pm to pay our respects & honor life, lives lived, and the still living
- Come out and celebrate how we’ve all made it this far, toast to the ones that have gone before us, toast to your tragedies & the roads you took to get home again
- Small plates & a cash bar & a few other fundraising / raffle extras are in the works
I’ll be in town April 21st with my family, continuing our journey of healing & recovery on the long road to realizing our home again (August 2025?). We have some hugs & hellos & thank yous to share with so many of you, as well as introductions. I had promised to bring the wife and kids last time, and I aim to follow through on that.
SUMMER
I will be taking a lot of time away from work this summer, focusing on the kids and our recovery efforts with the insurance steps ahead. Also regrouping on what mental & physical health means to me. We have some big trips in the works, and plenty of local fun as well. I have long hours on the computer ahead this summer, not for work though; for our family's recovery, immediate future, and long-term prospects. Our previous summer plan included lots of home time, lots of local adventures with our home as basecamp. Instead, I will be able to play host to the kids and their summer of adventures.
We don't have the same home protection & convenience like we used to, and without massive amounts of expensive, over-priced (but under deliver) "summer camps" to throw them in to (aged out, not awesome enough, etc.), my goal is to be there for them this summer, get them out and living life again on our own terms, me too.
Gina is absolutely in this mix for the summer, and she plans to continue to work with all her wonderful clients. We realized that her connection to work, serving her clients with her whole heart, is not only the driving force behind why she has chosen this career path for 30+ years, but it is therapeutic for her to simply do her work and be of service in her powers. I can't say the same for my work-life, but I know that I will be digging deep this summer into what work-life means to me in the wake of our home's death and life's changes.
That's about as much as I can supply for an update today.
We continue to survive this experience and look forward to your hugs, your kindnesses, your compassion, on a daily basis. I will be writing to many of you, individually 1:1, as we creep into summer, so stay tuned. I might even skip the writing and just call you!! Wow.
We added some more photos here.
We were on the news (the video is part of the top image, might need to click it once to watch the interview) I was able to slip in a few Phish references at the end, sweet.
And, during that interview, I mentioned our neighbor Kim, a nurse at the hospital above our house. Our reporter then interviewed Kim, and this happened, SO COOL! A year of their mortgage, paid. We love our neighbors, 3 great kids (The Christensens).
Love to you all, we will get by, we will survive,
- Tucker & Gina & Sylvie & Keller
____
Collins Family
#MarshallFire Update
January 11th, 2022
D-Day +12
Hey everyone, thanks for your patience and counsel as we gathered the resources to put this update together. We took everyone's advice and got some supporting webpages, links, and social posts created to help contain all the support and requests for ways to help, both immediate and long-term. Here is our status update, based on the most common questions we are seeing & hearing. Next update, we will get the kids to contribute their own stories in their own words and pictures.
Our love to all of you,
-Tucker & Gina & Keller & Sylvie
“Where are you?”
Safe, in a small brick house for now, downtown Boulder. We landed here Monday after 3 nights in a hotel, by the grace of our friend who had helped us originally buy the home in 2015. My mother Judy spent two nights in the hotel and was able to make it back to her condo, which is only about 3,000 feet from our home that was destroyed. She has some ventilation & ash & cleaning ahead, but we are grateful she is back in her home.
“How are you? How are the kids?”
It is day 10, feeling less like ghosts, feeling more like what is left of ourselves. Talking about it with so many amazing people that continue to reach out or stop by or take time when they see us has been helpful for each of us. Seeing other neighbors we used to see all the time in sporadic moments has been tough: A mom here at school pickup, a dad there in line at disaster services, etc. Those hugs have been so hard. We catch each other with this knowing-zombie-look and then sink into talking through tears. For a few days, our family experienced a loop of reality & dreams against a backdrop of hotel rooms & downtown Boulder, “Is it real? Did it happen? Are we dead?” But that is drifting away and the real frustrations of moving on, making a plan, and getting these kids their lives back has set in.
The kids are making the best of some things, making the most of new things, and have not held back in being with us on the emotional releases and frustrations that are unique to each of them. They have been supporting us, knowing when to hug, when to listen, when to smile & when to just cry. They have each had their moments when they realized breaking down was okay, not judged, and welcomed energy when naturally placed. We are proud to stand with these two young adults. Keller (13) and Sylvie (11) make the right jokes and keep us laughing the way we know how, using all our own family memes and ongoing riffs. Also had lots of chances to go into dark-humor on occasion, they are experts. The laughing tears and hysteria they can create with a simple comment about something we lost or our general situation have been hilarious, terribly tragic, and in the end, cathartic.
“What’s next?”
Coming right out of the evacuation nights of the hotel, we were in days of 2hr scheduling, “What does the next 2 hrs look like? Who needs food? Jacket?” About mid-week, we had begun to perfect the day-to-day scheduling format, and we are now up to the week-to-week schedule attempt tonight. We have half a brain now. This is key, because we can get to work on processing & moving some digital energy around to start figuring out this new world we need to survive in (using the Gina Knows Fitness website to help with this has been AWESOME).
We need to live again. We want to live again. We are NOT leaving our community.
Our current housing goal is to find a home as close as we can in location to our community, but it has to be one that replaces or exceeds the major components of our destroyed size & specifics. (More details of the house we are in search of are in the “How can we help?” section).
The initial intention is to 100% rebuild and be a part of the rebirth of the community. However, we anticipate that sentiment to be stressed to the maximum degree while we live through the details of what that actually means. Rebuilding along with 1000+ other homes drives up the rebuild costs to astronomical figures that we are all grappling with right now. Everyone’s rebuild costs will exceed insurance coverage. The insurance companies don’t have this type of volume vs. circumstance cost scale needed to adjust the rebuild cost. This will force many in our community to just take their insurance settlement and leave their homes to the vacuum of the system.
“Were you able to grab anything, save anything?”
Nope. We thought we were being evac'd for smoke, gone for a night at most.
Tucker was not home when Gina and the kids and Judy evac'd. Gina had two frightened kids to wrangle and get to safety, while also communicating with Judy to make sure she got out safe from her apartment nearby. So they grabbed enough for a night away, and a few clothes for Tucker, too. All our memories, computer hard drives, family heirlooms, keepsakes, files, family artwork.... gone.
“What happened that day?”
FROM GINA:
December 30, 2021
11:44 am -The kids and I smelled fire as we were about to leave the house and head over to the Louisville Rec Center for a workout. We paused and ran up the hill to see what we were smelling. The fire was way off in the distance, but the wind was fierce. The air quality was terrible so we decided to wait on the gym and stay home for a bit.
12:52pm - It was bad. I put on goggles and a mask to see if I could see any nearby flames out our back door. No flames, but the wind was powerful. I couldn't stand up, and it was terrifying.
1:10pm- The firestorm was moving fast. We watched raccoons leaving their den at 1pm. The kids and I stood in my bedroom in awe of the smoke barrelling through our neighborhood. Keller was terrified. Sylvie remained calm and task-driven in the moments of crisis.
1:37pm- I closed our garage door for the last time ever. We drove to a nearby office complex and waited there to meet Judy (Tucker's mom).
2:04pm- Judy and her friend, Elana arrived. Elana's family lives across the street from us. They met us in the same parking lot. I asked if they thought I could go back and grab Tucker's computer (that I had forgotten). They said our neighborhood was already in flames when they escaped.
From there, you can watch news coverage. Our neighborhood, right behind Avista hospital, was engulfed in flames from this insane "firestorm". It was too dangerous for firefighters to try and save. Understandably, they had to move on to homes that might be saved. We watched our neighborhood being eaten by the fire in spectacular fashion for hours.
January 1, 2022- We arrived at the "smoldering hole" for just a few minutes. The smell was toxic. And the view was gut-wrenching.
Tucker's video is powerful. And has been helping us heal.
We drove out of the neighborhood the same way we had driven in 6 years ago with our wonderful realtor, Andrew.
We drove all the way to Boulder in tears and disbelief. And arrived at a sweet empty house in Downtown Boulder to inspect before we camped out in it. Through the love and support of our community, we secured a place to land. We moved in on January 3. We're settling in for a while to ground ourselves and give this team time to regroup.
Here is a picture of our backyard buddha, gracing the porch of our new space.
FROM TUCKER:
I was home that morning, but away when the family evac'd.
It was an extremely windy red flag day. It was also our neighborhood's trash day, an unlucky combo that every Coloradan on the front range knows about. So I had been up early to re-close the lids on our bins and bring them up to the garage so they would stop falling over. I spent the morning looking out for the trash & recycle trucks. I remember these huge gusts of 70+ mph at sunrise, but it backed off by 10am.
I walked with my mother Judy, as we do every Thursday. It was 10:28am this time though, earlier than usual, and since I was on a staycation-vacation at home that holiday week, we walked through my neighborhood instead of near my work campus in town. My mom and I had a good 2.43 mile walk without being too disturbed by the 40+ mph gusts.
At 11:45am I was running late for an appointment in Boulder. Gina said she smelled smoke. On my way down US 36 into Boulder, as I watched the plume, I drove passed what I thought was a simple grass fire that was going to be contained, even though it was 100+mph wind, no prob, it was far from our home, MILES from home, with commercial businesses and roads and a highway between the beast and our lot.
By 12:08pm I am slipping into a comfortable spa robe at a place in Boulder that had half of its giant glass double door entry blown off its hinges in the wind. Should've seen that as a sign I guess. Before climbing onto a warmed massage bed, a delayed birthday gift from my wife, my focus was turned inward.
You see everyone, 12/30 was designated for several weeks, as my self-care day. I scheduled my first massage in 5 years for that day, followed by an my first 80-minute salt water float tank session in as many years, just to combine them and get even more loose.
As I lay there getting my shoulder knots abused, getting my hamstrings unstrung, the evacuation orders hit, my wife & kids were at home, and they have terrifying video as the smoke advanced into our neighborhood.
I walked out of the massage when it was over, to a text from Gina,
"The raccoons are leaving, so are we."
And scrolling up to read the earlier messages, I saw they evac'd. So, i headed to the rally point due east, 15 mins from home, thinking they had to evac because of smoke, things should be fine.
A few hours later, our exact home was on TV, on fire. I confirmed in a still image I nabbed from twitter. Our house was dying.
My day to relax.
- T
____
THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT & ENERGY
We have a huge list of beautiful souls to reach out to when we get our heads above all this. Looking forward to that has been a nice distraction in the midst of trips to the Disaster Assistance Center, donation drop locations, and work.
We are fascinated at how much love & care came rushing in as we watched our town burn. The love is REAL. Our community, our friends, our family, co-workers, former bosses & elementary school friends from 35+ years ago, and the absolute kindness of strangers have filled our world with hope.
For now, please know we are putting all our effort into understanding the recovery & disaster process as our full focus outside of our professional roles.
As many of our neighbors are finding out, we have insurance, but due to pandemic circumstances with supply costs & labor costs, combined with the volume of losses in one distinct area, compounded by the home value changes in the last 3 years, the insurance company funds for most of the destroyed homes will fall well short of rebuilding costs. There are 1,000+ homes in this circumstance. ARTICLE HERE Denver Gazette
With love and in solidarity with our community,
- Tucker & Gina & Sylvie & Keller
