LOVELAND, Colo — Larimer County officials lifted all mandatory evacuations for the Alexander Mountain Fire on Wednesday. While many residents returned home, others found ashes where their homes or cabins once stood.
Among the 26 homes destroyed and four others damaged was an old cabin built in the 1970s owned by Emerson Wood’s family.
“I mean, how would you feel if your favorite place to go was gone?” asked Wood.
The Wood family had owned the cabin for 28 years. Emerson, now 33, recalled spending nearly every weekend there growing up, enjoying countless summer days among the trees and winter nights wearing matching sweaters with his brothers.
Despite his father’s efforts to fireproof the cabin, Larimer County officials informed them last week that their cabin was gone. When Emerson and his father visited the site for the first time on Wednesday, the void where the cabin once stood was jarring.
“You’re almost blind with what you’re seeing because it’s too much,” said Wood.
Wood said that the fire seemed indiscriminate, sparing some houses directly to the left and right of theirs, while destroying others, to the front and back. Yet, a few trees remain around the property.
“I’m happy how many trees were left. My father, that was his biggest thing, the trees,” said Wood.
Inside the house, they lost everything—old VHS tapes, clothes and family photos. While sifting through the rubble, Wood found one thing that didn't burn – a fork.
“It seems like out of a movie, looking at the destruction, and like, oh, you found the one thing… a fork… that’s it,” said Wood.
The fork used countless times for meals, holidays and almost every weekend of Emerson’s childhood, stood as a poignant reminder of the memories that once filled the cabin.
“Memories, that’s the biggest thing. I mean, it’s just a building, but it’s more than a building. It’s memories,” said Wood.
The empty space serves as a reminder of everything they lost, but also an opportunity to rebuild. While it’s hard to think about the future with the loss still fresh, the Woods are determined to reconstruct their cabin on the same spot.
“It’s one of those things you don’t think is actually going to happen to you, but then it happens to you and then it just kinda hits you, like hits you in the head with a rock and you’re like, oh yeah, it is actually gone, it’s gone,” Wood reflected.
The Woods now join a growing group of wildfire victims in Colorado, where families never imagined such devastation would strike them until it did.
The family has set up a GoFundMe to help them rebuild.