LOVELAND, Colo. — A well-known Loveland artist said she has learned her garage and art studio are among the roughly two dozen structures confirmed lost in the Alexander Mountain Fire.
Linda Renaud said she evacuated her home in the Storm Mountain area Monday, after the mandatory evacuation was issued. Two days later, she learned from a neighbor who stayed behind inside the evacuation zone that her garage was gone.
“At that point, you're kind of just resigned. You’re like ‘OK, it’s gone,’” Renaud said. “In one sense, it’s better to know than to have that agony.”
Renaud is a professional artist and said a large portion of her paintings were hanging on the walls of her studio. She believes her home is still standing but isn’t sure whether the paintings inside the home will be salvageable.
“We and a lot of other people are in limbo, and you just have to acknowledge we’re not alone,” she said. “There’s a lot of people who are in this situation, or worse, where their home has burned down. We know of a couple friends where that’s the case.”
Renaud said she believes the majority of the burned structures are in her neighborhood, which sits just North of Palisade Mountain and South of Cedar Springs Reservoir.
She's anxious to see what’s left of her property but said she’s thankful her family and neighbors are all right.
“We’re together, we’ve got the dog and the cat, and we’ll get through it,” she said. “But yeah, you realize we all live with a kind of illusion that how it is today is how it’s going to be tomorrow, and it’s not so.”