A year later - reflecting on the East Troublesome Fire

Even a year later this post is hard to write- we were one of the lucky ones but we have neighbors and friends that lost so much. The William’s Fork fire spent much of August and September 2020 burning far to the southwest of our cabin. We had many blood red sunsets and a few smoky days.

A new fire - the east troublesome fire, was first reported on October 14, 2020 (to our west). Initially it seemed pretty far off, even big fires in Colorado don’t travel that far, especially this late in the season. We had headed down to Denver from the cabin in mid October to take care of some things and had a seasonal renter who was planning to move it at the end of October.

Throughout the day of October 21st, it seemed like the fire was intensifying the smoke was incredibly thick - it looked like night during the day.

    

The night of October 21 the unthinkable happened, the east troublesome blew up - the size of the fire exploded from 18,550 acres to 187,964 acres in appx 24 hours. The Town of Grand Lake received mandatory evacuations notices between 2-4 pm, and by 6 pm the fire had reached the edge of town.

The night of the 21st was one of the worst in history of Colorado fires. Thanks to many firefighters the town of Grand Lake had very little damage within the town. Columbine Lake was surrounded, but many homes were saved.

But we weren’t thorough it yet. The fire was close enough that our backyard camera was picking up flames in the distance (this is looking north towards grand lake). We are about 7 miles from Grand Lake. (black dot on map below - we are on the far west side of Lake Granby)

As the sun came up on October 22, the devastation was horrific to see - the fire had burned so close to the town. The arial views almost looked as if the town of Grand Lake was surrounded by burned land and the lake. In the pic above the red indicated where there had been active burn in last 24 hours.

On October 22nd, the East Troublesome fire came over the ridge to the west of our cabin just on the west side of highway 34 (in the pic above our cabin is on the road marked by a black line). @jeffreycooke video from Indian Peaks looking north https://t.co/fvK8Gl0QTv shows the fire lashing out into Lake Granby as he looks north from Indian peaks marina. It truly looked like the homes on our peninsula could not have survived.

We are so incredibly thankful for the firefighters, in the post above our mailboxes would have been just ahead on the road. The firefighters were doing everything they could to save homes as the fire raged.

In this post, @jeffreycooke is shooting just to our north showing that the fire had impacted highlands marina https://www.instagram.com/p/CGq8BJAnNB5/?igshid=rad4sykqvsf2 - which is less than 1000 feet to our north. between these two reports we knew that the fire was on the east side of highway 34 (our side) to the north and to the south - the question was whether it had reached our homes right in the middle.

I don’t think we slept much that night. Praying, texting and messaging neighbors to see if anyone had heard anything.

Morning of the 23rd a neighbor was in touch with one of the reporters - @jeffreycooke. The reporter was on our road early morning and did not see any burned structures on our road.

Prayers had been answered - it truly seemed like a miracle that our homes could have survived with fire in every direction, the firefighters are our heros!

There was both local and national coverage of the fires.

https://abcn.ws/31Fbtvv?cid=share_addthis_widget

https://abcnews.go.com/US/colorado-wildfires-grow-extremely-critical-fire-conditions-coming/story?id=73782720

https://twitter.com/gma/status/1319599570658131968?s=21

So much burned - the incident commander - we spent alot of time listening to the details he provided multiple times a day.

Damage at highlands marina (about 1000 ft north of our cabin)

It has been a year and we are still in awe that our cabin survived having fire in three directions.

We have been so impressed with the outpouring of neighbors helping neighbors, grand county is really a special place. Over the last year we have watched the community pull together to help each other, to remember those who lost their lives and to begin to rebuild.

The East Troublesome fire merged with the Cameron Peak fire to become the second largest wildfire in Colorado history.