LOUISVILLE — Every ornament on Heather Szucs’ donated Christmas tree is special.
There’s one signed by Isabella, age 4, from Alaska.
There are family photos a friend secretly printed off Szucs’ Facebook page and then placed into tiny Christmas frames.
Santa Clauses, glass bulbs, reindeer, the blinking yellow star on top — all donated.
“To me, now, the tree is more special,” Szucs said. “I never in my life realized how much community matters. I’m dedicated to paying it back for the rest of my life.”
Members of the Szucs family are celebrating their first Christmas on Larkspur Lane in Louisville since the 2021 Marshall fire destroyed the entire Cornerstone neighborhood. They moved into their newly built house on Aug. 10 and are among the first few hundred homeowners to finish rebuilding in the wake of Colorado’s most destructive wildfire.
“I feel at home. I feel calm,” Szucs said. “I feel peace.”
On Christmas morning, Szucs’ daughters — 11-year-old Savanah and 8-year-old Zoe — will wake before dawn and rush down the stairs to see what Santa Claus left. Then they’ll open family presents together with Szucs’ mother, Joan Wharton, who also lives in the home.
Family friends, including old neighbors, will come over for Christmas dinner.
“I like to feed people,” Szucs said.
It feels good to be in a new house. To be home. To be happy.
The Marshall fire, powered by hurricane-force winds, ripped through Boulder County on Dec. 30, 2021, killing two people and destroying more than $2 billion of homes and commercial property across Louisville, Superior and unincorporated county land.
Recovery from natural disasters takes years, and that’s proving to be the case with the Marshall fire. In a recent newsletter, Boulder County officials reminded people that it can take up to five years for a community to move through the various phases of disaster response and recovery.
Two years after the wildfire, fewer than a third of the destroyed homes have been rebuilt. As of Friday, 299 certificates of occupancy — signaling a new house meets all regulations and can be lived in — had been issued in Louisville, Superior and unincorporated Boulder County out of the 1,099 homes that were destroyed.
Aside from the physical recovery, overcoming the grief of losses also takes time.
Those who have moved back say they live in construction zones as builders work on houses for their neighbors.
Large garbage bins are parked on the roads and piles of stone and other construction materials sit in yards. On Friday afternoon in Szucs’ neighborhood, the sounds of drills and hammers blended in the air with the voices of children jumping on a trampoline.
Marshall fire families are figuring out what their new Christmas traditions will be after losing everything two years ago.
For some, it’s bittersweet.
On Christmas Eve, Shelagh Turner’s three adult children and their partners will come to her new home in Louisville’s Centennial neighborhood for a family sleepover.
Just like they did on Dec. 24, 2021.
“It was really special to have all spent one last night in the house,” Turner said. “They are going to do it again this year.”
It’s also Turner’s birthday, so they’ll celebrate her and the holiday.
The family will play their favorite games — sheepshead, cribbage, hearts or Rummikub — and they’ll eat a big meal.
But there still will be a sense of emptiness for what’s been lost, Turner said.
Gone are the childhood stockings by the fireplace. The Christmas village, built over the years by adding a house or two each season, was destroyed. And 30 years of ornaments, added annually to mark significant family event, burned to ashes.
A holiday highlight was bringing out the two big boxes that held the ornaments and reminiscing together as they decorated the tree, Turner said.
They would talk about kindergarten or the family trip to Paris or past family pets.
“That’s when we got our dog Max or our dog Maggie,” Turner said. “Or we had the baby kittens. It’s hard to lose those. I don’t know how I can replace them.”
Two years later, Turner still finds it hard to talk about what’s missing.
“I don’t know if I can get there again. It’s emotional,” she said. “I’ve thought about trying to find them but I don’t know.”
Mostly though, she’s looking forward to being with her children Alex, KiKi and Jackie. It will be Alex Turner’s first time to see the house since she moved in in September.
“The good thing about the fire is it taught me that you don’t need so much,” she said.
In Szucs’ neighborhood, a few more neighbors moved into homes the week before Christmas. The finished homes are trimmed with lights, and trees glimmer through front windows.
Szucs was one of the first to return when she moved back in August.
She was thrilled this week when a next-door neighbor called to tell her one of the family’s chickens had escaped its backyard pen. She looks forward to more visits with people she has missed.
“Things are starting to fall back into place. It’s becoming ‘us’ again, and we all love each other,” she said.
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