Flames danced in Patrick Van Meter’s rearview mirror Monday as he sped away from southern Colorado’s devastating Aspen Acres fire with his wife and two dogs in tow.
“Usually, Colorado has beautiful blue skies,” Van Meter, 59, said two days later. “The whole sky was black. You couldn’t see nothing. It looked like it was nighttime at 3 in the afternoon.”
Van Meter was in Pueblo, about 30 miles away from his house in the Cedar Grove neighborhood, when his wife Nadine called with the news that they needed to evacuate due to a rapidly approaching wildfire. Van Meter raced home with just enough time to toss three outfits, crucial medicine and the couple’s dogs, Princess and Lucky, into the car. State troopers were banging on their door by that point, urging them to flee, Van Meter said.
Not long after, the Van Meters’ house — once the historic built in 1918, he said — burned to the ground.
His son’s ashes, his motorcycles, his wife’s wedding ring — all gone.
“It was devastating, and we felt helpless,” Van Meter said. “We lost everything we owned except what we took. It was a pretty horrific event, but by the glory of God, we are safe and we got the animals out. God closes one door, and he opens another.”
The Aspen Acres fire burning in Pueblo and Custer counties nearly doubled in size to 47,953 acres — roughly 75 square miles — on Wednesday, becoming the state’s largest wildfire and the No. 1 firefighting priority in the nation, according to emergency managers.
The fast-moving wildfire, fueled by strong winds and single-digit humidity, destroyed more than 180 structures in the two counties, injured a firefighter and forced new evacuations Wednesday, according to the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office. There is zero containment.
Entire communities — Beulah, Rye, San Isabel and, on Wednesday, the town of Wetmore — have been ordered to evacuate. The Aspen Acres fire was burning 2 miles away from the popular tourist destination Bishop Castle, officials said.
“We know this is devastating,” Pueblo County Sheriff David Lucero said during a briefing Wednesday. “Itap devastating news for our residents… and our hearts are with every family, individual who has experienced loss. Please know we are doing everything possible to protect lives, property and communities.”
Phil Daniels, deputy chief of the and incident commander for the Aspen Acres fire, said firefighting resources are stretched in Colorado with so many other wildfires burning. But crews are traveling from Alaska, Tennessee and other parts of the country to fight the flames in Pueblo and Custer counties.
He said he expects 750 to 1,000 firefighters on the blaze in the next few days.
“This is the No. 1 fire in the nation,” Daniels said. “Every resource that we can get that we need will be brought to bear.”
Command of the firefighting efforts was scheduled to transfer to the Alaska Complex Incident Management Team 1 at 6 a.m. Thursday.
The 30,193-acre Snyder fire in Mesa County, which killed three firefighters over the weekend, was Colorado’s only major wildfire with any official containment Wednesday, with the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team in charge reporting that 49% of the fire’s perimeter was contained.
Other major fires still burning in the state included the Gold Mountain fire north of Ouray, the Ferris fire in the San Juan National Forest near Dolores, and the Willow fire near Leadville.
‘We can rebuild. We can replace.’
Marilyn Mondragon Wren was ready.
Living in the forests of Beulah and having been evacuated for wildfires multiple times before, Mondragon Wren had the foresight to pack boxes with her most important items — documents, jewelry — in case another fire forced her to make a hasty exit.
But on Monday, she and her husband were in Colorado Springs for a doctor’s appointment. The couple wasn’t home as they watched local news announce rolling evacuations that crept closer to the three homes they own in the area.
There was nothing they could do as two burned down.
“I teach English, and I don’t believe a word has been created that would adequately describe what it feels like to go through that,” Mondragon Wren said in an interview Wednesday. “To see it reduced to that kind of rubble was really something. A two-story house that looks like five leftover pieces of tin is crazy. We know we are very blessed. It could have been so much worse. We know God is really good to us and let us enjoy those homes as long as we did.
“We are really lucky for that and the outpouring of support and offers of kindness is amazing.”
Mondragon Wren believes one of their homes, a small guest house, is still standing and prays it makes it through the natural disaster so that the couple has somewhere to go once they can return.
The artist said she lost all of her paintings, a record collection dating back to the 1960s featuring original albums by The Beatles and Elvis Presley, and precious jewelry.
However, she has been grateful for the support of her loved ones, who started a to raise money for her and have provided for her during a time of need.
“I’ve lived through car accidents, motorcycle wrecks, cancer and now a fire, and I consider myself beyond blessed,” Mondragon Wren said. “We can rebuild. We can replace. I have breath in my body.”
‘It will be all right’
Cedar Grove, about 30 miles southwest of Pueblo, is a woodsy, rural stretch along Colorado 78 near the Beulah Valley. There are just four residents of Cedar Grove, Van Meter said, and everyone escaped the fire. Even his rooster and chicken managed to survive the blaze, a neighbor told him.
On Monday, as Van Meter drove away from the house he had just repainted, the wildfire raged about a mile behind him, he said.
“It was insane,” Van Meter said. “We had 15 minutes, maybe, to get out. You just think about everything — all your pictures, all your memories. My wife tells me we’ll have more memories and that it will be all right.”
Van Meter and his wife, who have also , are staying in a local hotel for the time being and have been offered a place to stay while they look for somewhere new to rent.
“Everybody here is like a family,” Van Meter said of his community. “You go to the Beulah General Store, and everybody knows you by name. The mailman puts the mail into your hand and says to have a nice day to your face. I want to thank everybody for their prayers and their help. There are still good people out there.”
All evacuations remain in place, officials stressed Wednesday, and it may take days to gauge the full scope of the fire’s destruction or let anyone return home.
“As for the town of Beulah itself, it has been impacted,” said Daniels, the incident commander. “And when you go in there, it’s going to look different for a lot of people. But that’s where our focus is, and in a few days we’ll know what it’s going to look like.”
Wednesday night, incident commanders to show its enlarged 47,953-acre footprint — with Beulah well inside the wildfire’s burn zone.
Denver Post staff writer Lauren Penington contributed to this report.
