Larry Boven comforts his wife, Mary Boven, as she gets emotional while looking at the burnt remains of their Louisville, Colorado, home of almost 30 years on Sunday, January 2, 2022. The Boven's stopped by while moving stuff into their new temporary home at a Denver Colorado, church. “I’d like to set back time,” Larry Boven said while across the street from their destroyed home. “I feel really empty and I just don’t know where to start.” Mary Boven later expressed that she was angry about it all.
From the Ashes
1,084 homes burnt down and two people died when the Marshall Fire tore through Louisville, Superior and incorporated Boulder County, Colorado in the dead of winter. The blaze was the most structurally destructive in Colorado history, displacing tens of thousands in the suburban communities of the Front Range.
An unusually dry and warm latter half of 2021, linked to human-caused climate change, along with little snow and high winds primed the landscape for the rare event that will soon become more common. A substantial snowfall ended the Marshall Fire over the next day, Jan. 1, 2022. In the immediate aftermath, the community came together to help those displaced. Survivors and evacuees were then left to realize their enormous losses, sift through the rubble and reckon with where to go from the ashes.
I photographed, reported and gathered audio on assignments for NPR, Colorado Public Radio and Boulder Reporting Lab.
The Severson family, from left, daughter Kailey, mother Annette, daughter Brenna and father Colby, look at the still smoldering remains of their 17 year home in Superior, Colorado, on Saturday, January 1, 2022. The family scanned the newly snow-covered rubble and ash, pointing out where various rooms and items used to be to orient themselves.
YMCA Arapahoe Center employee Jeff Oliver directs people in need of heat and water outside the center, now operating as an evacuation center for those affected by the Marshall Fire, in Lafayette, Colorado, on Friday, December 31, 2021. Oliver and the YMCA team mobilized the evacuation center as quickly as they could, he said, and it was proudest he’d ever felt to work there.
Siblings George and Cathy Zheng, 8 and 10, play on their cot at the YMCA Arapahoe Center in Lafayette, Colorado, on Friday, December 31, 2021. Their family’s Superior, Colorado, home turned out to be safe.
A baby tag from when Melissa Lockman’s then unnamed daughter was born sits next to a high school photograph of her husband in a pile of charred papers stored in their new rental house garage in Boulder, Colorado, on Thursday, May 12, 2022. Lockman recovered the papers and other items while sifting through the ashes of her home.
Volunteer Karen Woolhiser, right, helps Meredith Manion of Louisville at the YMCA Arapahoe Center, an evacuation center for those affected by the Marshall fire, in Lafayette, Colorado on Friday, December 31, 2021.
David McLallen, a Louisville resident for 40 years, strokes one of his three cats, Sunshine, on his cot at the YMCA Arapahoe Center in Lafayette, Colorado, on Friday, December 31, 2021. “I’m arthritic, so I don’t move real fast under the best of circumstances, so my thought was just cats. Get the cats,” he said. McLallen, who recently lost his wife and whose daughter lives elsewhere, says his cats, also called “the girls” by him, are his family.
As snow falls heavily, volunteers wait to give out space heaters and bottled water to Marshall Fire survivors and evacuees at the YMCA Arapahoe Center, an evacuation center, in Lafayette, Colorado on Friday, December 31, 2021. Power outages and water boiling advisories affected much of the area after the fire.
Rev. Bradley Laurvick of Highlands United Methodist Church, center, carries in a donated kitchen item for Larry Boven, left, and his wife, Mary Boven, in their new temporary apartment at a church location in Denver, Colorado, just two days after the Marshall Fire started, on Sunday, January 2, 2022.
A box welcomes the Boven family to their new temporary apartment at the Edgwater location of Highlands United Methodist Church in Denver, Colorado, on Sunday, January 2, 2022. When they first sat down in the apartment, Mary Boven began reflecting on all the memories and mementos lost in the fire.
Mary and Larry Boven pose for a portrait in their new temporary apartment at the Edgwater building of Highlands United Methodist Church in Denver, Colorado on Sunday, January 2, 2022. “I guess I’m still hopeful that we’re going to put this back together again and rebuild our live,” Larry Boven said.
Adriane Hisch’s “little work van” sits parked, completely destroyed from the Marshall fire, at her home in Superior, Colorado on Saturday, January 1, 2022. “I spend a lot of time, a lot of miles with it, and the fact that it’s just still kind of standing there is amazing…She was a good strong van. She did a lot for me.”