Rockrimmon residents continue to worry about wildfire

When you live in a place that has seen a natural disaster, it seems like everyone tells time based on the event.

On the northwest side of Colorado Springs, time itself seems to be based on the day that the Waldo Canyon Fire invaded the city.

Marianne Hering said, “I’ll never forget the night that came over the hill and came rushing down. It was terrifying.”

Jen Williams said, “the day it came out of Queen’s Canyon, it was like the apocalypse.”

Nature has a way of offering reminders of the past.

Some of those reminders are subtle, like the persistent winds.

“It’s just very windy here lately,” said Matthew Knuffke.

And some of those reminders are obvious. Like the scar that still paints the mountains in hues of brown instead of green.

The sign at Colorado Springs Fire Department Station 12 on Rockrimmon Boulevard is a man made reminder of what happened, but it’s not the only one.

Of all of the reminders of the Waldo Canyon Fire in northwest Colorado Springs, perhaps the most poignant is the sign from the Oak Valley neighborhood thanking first responders for their help during that time.

Going around this neighborhood, you wonder what people are thinking when they see the fire danger creeping up.

Hering said, “I still have my boxes packed from last time.”

As they walk the trails, the memories of the last fire in this area are still very fresh.

Whether they’re young, like Katie Knuffke, who talked about her grandparents home: “It was really close to their house.”

Or older, like Doug Knuffke, who told us about his memories of the fire that took some of his neighbor’s homes but spared the one that he and his wife share.

“Being evacuated for ten days…we were some of the first to be evacuated,” he said.

People don’t want to see another large fire. The memories of one are enough to last a lifetime.

By the time that the fire was out in Waldo Canyon, more than 400 houses had been burned.

At the time it was the most destructive wildfire in state history, but was surpassed by the Black Forest fire the next year.

Officials eventually determined that the fire was human caused, but have not found out who did it despite a reward that eventually grew to $100,000.