"I turned back towards my house, and I see the fire myself," Matre says. "I saw a thirty-foot wall of flames coming towards my house."
On July 30, a wildfire ignited in the rural Stone Canyon area outside of Lyons, a small town with a population of more than 2,000 people that sits just north of Boulder. According to Boulder County, the fire destroyed nearly 1,600 acres and five homes. One death is also being investigated as part of the part, according to the county.
Before firefighters had the blaze under control on Sunday, August 4, Matre narrowly avoided losing the house where she has been living for the past decade.
After seeing a "wall of flames," Matre says she was "shocked" at first, but quickly went into "go mode," running back into the house to scoop up her daughter. Without time to grab leashes and collars, she led her three dogs into the car, too.
"In that moment, I didn't have time to be scared. I just had time to act and go," she recalls. "I did surprise myself, being able to get the things done that needed to be done."
Matre had been preparing for the Alexander Mountain fire — a larger fire that was miles away, just west of Loveland — so she already had important documents and supplies in her car. She had time to grab a couple pictures from her house before driving to a friend's house near Lyons Valley River Park to watch the fire and smoke from a safe distance.
"I thought that would be the last time I'd see my house," she says. "We sat in a yard watching smoke billowing over the ridge, and every time I saw a big black plume of smoke, I just thought, 'That's my house.' It was very, very surreal."
Boulder County resident Kerry Matre said that she saw a thirty-foot wall of flames coming towards her house in Stone Canyon when she evacuated on July 30.
Courtesy of Kerry Matre
"This is it," she told him.
His wife had been at home when she saw smoke coming her way, Schneider says. While preparing go boxes and messaging Schneider, she looked outside again, and "the smoke had turned into fire, which was coming down the nearby canyon wall," he remembers.
Schneider has been living on the border of Lyons for three decades on a 35-acre property in rural Boulder County. Knowing his wife had already evacuated, he didn't go home but instead to a safe spot along the St. Vrain Creek where they agreed to meet. He watched his house through binoculars and his porch cameras.
"I'm looking at footage of fire, tens of feet high in our garden out in the front," he says. "It's really scary to watch."
Schneider describes the experience as "watching the scariest movie you've ever seen, and it was real life."
But when they returned home, Schneider saw that his house was still standing, which was "astonishing" because the area around him was burned black. He credits a "combination of mitigation, the hard work by firefighters and some luck" with saving his house.
Schneider has been living on the border of Lyons for three decades on a 35-acre property in rural Boulder County. Knowing his wife had already evacuated, he didn't go home but instead to a safe spot along the St. Vrain Creek where they agreed to meet. He watched his house through binoculars and his porch cameras.
"I'm looking at footage of fire, tens of feet high in our garden out in the front," he says. "It's really scary to watch."
Schneider describes the experience as "watching the scariest movie you've ever seen, and it was real life."
But when they returned home, Schneider saw that his house was still standing, which was "astonishing" because the area around him was burned black. He credits a "combination of mitigation, the hard work by firefighters and some luck" with saving his house.
"Our house was saved," he says. "But we're surrounded by 360 degrees of burn, and it's astonishing that the house survived."
The astronomy professor says that his property now "feels a little bit like we're living on the moon," because the fire left behind "this barren landscape all around us."
Matre says that when she returned to her property, "the house itself was surprisingly untouched," but the area around it was charred. The fire damaged the house's windows and utilities — including her water, septic and electrical systems — and it burned down her garden and a barn. But considering the damage around the house, her home is still "amazingly intact," she says.
"I have forty acres of land, and every inch of that land is burned except the house," she says. "It burned right up to the foundation of my house."
To the north of her house, two houses burned down completely, and all the houses in that area had some sort of fire damage, she says. According to Schneider, three homes at neighboring properties by him were burned down.
Nick Schneider's house in Stone Canyon was surrounded by charred black land after a wildfire tore through.
Courtesy of Nick Schneider
"There's no visible smoke damage inside the house," Matre says, but whenever she walks in, "after five minutes, my eyes start to burn." She's trying to fix the problem by using her air conditioner to circulate air, but she thinks she may have to wash or repaint the walls.
Schneider is borrowing fans and air conditioners from friends to clear the smoke out of his house, but he thinks "it's going to take a long time to recover." Matre estimates it will take weeks for the smoke to clear out of her place.
"If you can imagine, if the house survives and it's completely surrounded by burn, there's just an immense environment of smoke and ash and soot," Schneider says. "So our air was awful when we came back into our house, and it will be for some time to come."
Mitigating Fire Damage to Your Home
Schneider and Matre take steps every year to mitigate fire risks at their homes, and both stepped up those efforts ahead of the Stone Canyon fire after warnings from neighbors and firefighters.Schneider recommends other Boulder County residents sign up for Wildfire Partners, a county service that works with home owners to keep their homes safe from wildfires. He used the program to bring a retired firefighter to his property to survey it and find out how to lower his risk.
The firefighter told Schneider to hardscape, or replace vegetation with ten tons of stones and gravel, and pull out about 100 bushes that trailed from grasslands right up to his house. If he left the bushes in, they would have been "this wick that would catch the house on fire," says Schneider, who credits these steps as "a key part" to keeping his home safe.
"Those are the real things that saved our house," he says. "It makes the house easier to save from the firefighter point of view."
Grass is already starting to regrow around the house of Nick Schneider after firefighters quelled the Stone Canyon fire on Sunday, August 4.
Courtesy of Nick Schneider
Matre says that she worked with two firefighters this summer to prepare. She advises anyone else fireproofing their house to remove tree limbs and install cement-based siding, like Hardie board, for the house. She's also buried propane tanks used to heat the house, and she recommends keeping all important documents in one box to be able to grab and go.
Firefighters from the town of Hygiene, which is next to Longmont, responded to the fire at Matre's place after she evacuated. When they arrived, they started cutting down trees next to her house, sprayed water on and around her house and chucked wooden patio furniture and fire wood away from the home. "Putting all those things together, I think that's why the house survived," she says.
Schneider says he's feeling "some survivors guilt and compassion" for others who lost their property. But he says that the Lyons community has "banded together" in a way he hasn't seen since the 2013 floods.
"There's no place you can live and be free of natural disaster. It's all about how you deal with that disaster afterwards," he says. "The strength of this community is the support we provide for each other. It's more important to have support for all the problems that arise in life then to think you can avoid them completely."
He and Matre agree that the Stone Creek fire is the worst natural disaster that they've ever been through, however, worse than the 2013 floods.
Matre shares Schneider's gratitude to the Lyons community for making the recovery easier.
"Lyons is the most amazing community I've ever seen," she says. "We're there for each other, and our neighbors in the canyon were there for each other. Having that support brings comfort and a feeling of safety."
