Fire investigations continue years after tragedies
It will be four years next month since the Waldo Canyon fire, and three years since the Black Forest fire, but questions still linger about the causes.
These days in Black Forest, the snow melts faster because there are fewer trees to block the sunlight.
Some of those dead trees are now lying along Black Forest Road, depending on whether property owners could stand to cut them down and let them go.
“That was kind of a personal decision,” explains PJ Langmaid, “Do you keep them up? Do you take them down? A lot of people took them down to move on.”
The latest step in moving on for Langmaid is preparing his newly rebuilt home for painting.
A lot of his neighbors have already replaced their homes.
Others have moved on, not willing to risk losing their home a second time.
Three years later, no one has forgotten the feeling the day the fire forced them out.
“I remember the look on my daughter’s face when I told her it was time for her and her mother to leave,” recalls Langmaid, “that will be in my brain for the rest of my life. That night when I was leaving here, just houses on fire, and cars on fire. The birds were chirping, it was around midnight. It was surreal.”
The Black Forest fire is still an active investigation because two people, Marc and Robin Herklotz, were killed.
Lt. Robert Jaworski with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office says, “We know the origin location, and at this point, that’s about all we know.”
A special task force concluded the fire was the result of human action, but whether it was intentional or not is unknown.
The case will remain active until that is known.
“We can’t close the investigation until we have the answers for the family. That’s who we’re working for,” said Jaworski.
Nearly 500 homes were lost in the Black Forest fire, and about half were rebuilt as of May 2016.
Not nearly as many homes were lost in the Waldo Canyon fire west of Colorado Springs, but the majority of those homes, primarily in the Mountain Shadows neighborhood, are already rebuilt or will be soon.
The rebuilding of Mountain Shadows has outpaced Black Forest, but Colorado Springs police have run into the same brick wall in their own homicide investigation that began the day Bill and Barbara Everett died from the fire inside their home on Rossmere Street.
CSPD Lt. Adrian Vasquez says they need the public’s help.
“What we need is more information from someone out there who knows what happened,” said Vasquez.
Springs police initially received hundreds of tips, but over the years, the number grew smaller and smaller.
Detectives say they understand the public’s unfulfilled desire for answers.
“They deserve to know what happened,” says Vasquez, “they deserve to know who did it. There was 346 homes lost here, so it is frustrating. We obviously all want to know what happened and who did it.
But for PJ and many others, the future means more than the past, and they are looking ahead, despite this unsolved mystery.
“The market’s recovered up here. People have stunning views that they never knew they had. Business and developers are looking up here,” says Langmaid, “so you know, there’s great hope ahead of us while we look back at the tragedy.”
If the individuals who started the fires are found, and if it appears they were intentionally set, detectives say murder charges are possible.
If it turns out the fires were started accidentally, the district attorney’s office base the charges on the exact circumstances.
Click here for a detailed map of the Waldo Canyon Fire
Click to learn how to protect your own home from future forest fires
