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.