1 year after Marshall Fire, neighborhood organizer looks back on how she's helped her Boulder County community
This week marks one year since the Marshall Fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Louisville, Superior and Boulder County. After the wind died down and the devastating fire was extinguished, there were so many more issues that arose, and the problems weren't going to be solved by government officials or elected leaders alone. It was regular members of those Colorado communities that were affected that saw a need and stepped up to help their friends and neighbors.
Cheryl Gordon took the mission to help people in her neighborhood to a whole new level. Half of the homes there were destroyed in the fire.
"If it hadn't been for winds dying down, it wouldn't have been just half the neighborhood. The entire neighborhood would have been gone," she said.
Gordon was certainly grateful her own home was spared, but she wanted to help, and she had a background in communications.
"There was so much news -- bulletins and events and information coming out -- I just started sending out a news email every day," she said.
That news email's subscriber list blossomed to approximately 400 recipients, and it it got sent out every day for several months. The effort became a full time endeavor for Gordon. Even now, she continues to email weekly.
And Gordon did far more than that. She organized a neighborhood committee called UBC that meets every week with disaster recovery managers.
"The county representatives go back and see what they can do to help, and then we push that information out. We have speakers come, the fire chiefs have come, emergency managers come, open space people," Gordon said.
Gordon said UBC has gotten educated about a wealth of wildfire-related topics, including ditches, watersheds, grasses, building materials, fencing and landscaping.
She even attended a national wildfire conference in California recently and is quickly becoming an expert on wildfire mitigation and preparedness.
"We met with firefighters and fire chiefs, the U.S. Forest Service," she said.
She also linked up with community groups in Louisville and Superior.
"This team just formed out of nowhere. We all just work together and we share information that we think could be useful to the other communities," Gordon said.
"Out of the Ashes: One Year after the Marshall Fire" is an in-depth look at some untold stories one year after the Marshall Fire. The special airs on Friday at 6:30 p.m. on CBS News Colorado.
When she learned there wasn't enough water in the Marshall area where the fire began, Gordon organized a roundtable that resulted in a grant application. When the county passed a new tax for mitigation, she put together a petition to give residents more of a voice in how the money is spent. She even organized a picnic this summer to reunite neighbors. And she isn't done.
"We maybe even need to ask the very tough questions -- why do we have 22 fire districts? We have more than 100 fire departments just in the county," she said.
She says the gratitude she's received from her neighbors makes it all worth it.
"There was even one neighbor who said 'I indexed your emails.' It made me feel so good," she said. "It's been very rewarding and I still do feel it's one step at a time, but I don't see me turning back or even taking a break right now because I just feel what's happening right now is so important."
