Yesterday a friend and I drove through part of Mountain Shadows, the development devastated by the Waldo Canyon Fire June 26. It was intense. On that Tuesday, the news coverage, including footage (played over and over and over again) of the fire swallowing a house, was riveting, difficult to watch but impossible not to. Yesterday, seeing the rubble, detritus of lives and homes, piles of ashes right next to completely intact homes, was …I’m not even sure of the word, and thesaurus.com isn’t helping. Intense, sobering, horrifying, surreal.

I felt a bit ghoulish photographing the wreckage of people’s lives and homes. I remember, however, seeing many photos from New Orleans and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. I never felt that those photos were gratuitous or exploitative; rather they seemed an integral component in the narrative of a tragedy, visual elements of a story that needed to be told. Those images inspired compassion and provided motivation for rebuilding and motivated people to think about ways to avoid similar tragedies in the future. In that spirit, and with those goals, I offer the photos that appear in this post and the ones to follow.

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Around 4:45 p.m. on June 26, the fire jumped a ridge and swept down (against typical fire behavior, apparently) into Mountain Shadows. This is part of the ridge, as seen from the entrance to Wolfe Ranch. Ironically or not, it was raining lightly during this part of our drive.

Below, part of the driveway leading to Wolfe Ranch; the Wolfes are the family who owns the Flying W Ranch. –When you open the link, music plays. Just an FYI if you’re at work or somewhere quiet. 🙂

Below, this house appeared untouched by the fire, at least from where we were. Burned trees stand behind it and some of the foliage in the foreground is charred; we saw repeated evidence of the narrow margins by which some homes were saved–a testament to the dedication and perseverance of the firefighters.

As the signs indicate, this is the corner of Ashton Park and Courtney. Numerous houses in this area burned, while a strip in the middle appeared untouched. Bulldozers, cranes, and other heavy equipment were clearing and razing a large tract of land; it was impossible to tell how many homes had stood here. The landscaping under the street sign appeared new.

Looking west on Courtney Drive: All the houses on the left side are gone; on the right, undamaged houses (people were gardening and driving home from work and cranking music) alternate, in an erratic and apparently patternless way, with charred foundations.

These two driveways are only a few feet apart. The house on the left is gone; people are living in the house on the right–again, such a narrow boundary. We saw several signs, even on properties with total destruction, thanking the firefighters.

This pile of ash used to be someone’s house. How do you begin to wrap your mind around that?

We saw numerous cul-de-sacs like this one (looking to the southeast), on which all the residences were gone. Many streets are still closed to traffic.

I’ll close for now with this image of the moon from one of the nights of the fire (I don’t recall the date).

More to come…