'It's just a house, but not just a house.' Marshall Fire victims' plans to rebuild

A nightmare come true

Casey Lombardo has spent much of her son’s life reassuring him their house was safe from a forest fire, which was a fear of his. As the Lombardo home was in the middle of a residential neighborhood, Casey told her son he could take comfort in knowing forest fires only happen in remote parts of the mountains, not in neighborhoods like theirs.

Dec. 30 started out like any other day. The Lombardo children were playing in the backyard with neighbors when Casey’s friend called to tell her a fire was heading her way, and she should pack an evacuation bag just in case.

Casey’s fear was minimal until she hung up the phone and saw the nightmare come true.

A shadow of dimming sunlight reflected off the grass, and the orange-fire sky covered Boulder County. The cloud of smoke neared her house in Louisville, and she knew the family’s home was in danger

“It didn’t feel real or even possible because we always reassured our kids that we live in a really safe neighborhood,” Casey said. “For us to be living through it was weird, and we were just kind of in survival mode.”

Casey then ran across the street to tell her neighbors of the disaster, before quickly returning to tell her kids they needed to pack their bags with things that weren’t replaceable: special Christmas toys, family photos, her grandmother’s jewelry and survival kits.

In tears, the kids frantically filled seven bags with their favorite toys, pictures and cards, making split decisions about what was and was not replaceable.

Casey and her husband, Kevin, found themselves in shock, unable to think about the situation and struggling to escape the crippling knowledge that the home they planned to spend their lives in would likely be a pile of ash within hours.

Casey remembers standing in the kitchen, holding a backpack, cell phone charger and a pair of sneakers while her husband yelled for them to leave immediately, but Casey’s feet felt glued to the ground, and her husband’s words echoed in her head without registering.

“It was just weird and sad and confusing,” Casey said. “I knew that we had lost everything.”

The reality hit Casey when she and her family checked into their hotel in Fort Collins, where a friend had booked a night for them while they were under mandatory evacuation.

Casey and Kevin saw glaring images of their neighborhood in flames on every television in the hotel, and the seven bags in the corner of her room seemed to represent holding onto a piece of their lives, when they may never get the other pieces back.

“I looked at those bags and thought ‘this might be all we have forever,’” Casey recalled. “It all just happened so quickly.”

For Kevin, losing the house meant much more than just losing a place to eat and sleep. Movie nights on the couch, the game room, the kids’ playroom, the makeshift classroom set up for remote learning during the pandemic. 

Gone.

“It’s just a house,” Kevin has tried to tell himself. “But it’s not just a house.”

The days after

Both families struggled to explain the tragedy to their children, that everything they valued was destroyed and they would never be getting it back. 

Hours and days into the aftermath, the families started receiving texts, emails and phone calls from friends they hadn’t seen in decades asking about their safety and wellbeing.

While they appreciated the support, the families felt they had no capacity to respond while in the midst of such extreme trauma.

“It’s a very hard message to send to an 8 year old and a 5 year old that probably everything you have is gone now,” Kevin said. “It's just this overwhelming sense of ‘where do you start to rebuild your life?’ And you don't really have time to sit down and think about that.”