Community comes together to write inspiring messages on home destroyed by Marshall Fire
Community members are coming together
By OLIVIA YOUNG
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COLORADO (KCNC) — Community members are coming together, writing inspiring messages on the frame of a house being rebuilt after it was destroyed by the Marshall fire.
“May love and joy bless this home and all who live here” along with other messages of love and support will lay hidden in the walls of the Pomeroy family’s new home long after it’s rebuilt.
“We got here, we thought this was our forever home and that didn’t end up being the case,” Reina Pomeroy said.
She moved to Colorado with her husband and two young children from California in 2021. They had only been living in Colorado for about five months when the Marshall Fire changed everything.
“As I was putting my little one down for a nap it got really dark and the sky turned orange,” Pomeroy recalls of the day the fire started.
Within a few hours of evacuating, the family turned on the television to see their home on the news.
“We saw it ablaze,” Pomeroy expressed.
Houses next door were untouched, while their forever home was lost.
“We lost everything, whatever we had in the car was all we had,” Pomeroy said.
But out of the loss, Reina found meaning after co-founding the “Marshall Together” advocacy group to help others through the rebuilding process.
“The things that Reina does for community are really important to keep neighborhoods together and it gives people the motivation to come back and rebuild,” said Tawnya Somauroo, who lost her own Louisville home to the fire. She also co-founded Marshall Together with Pomeroy.
16 months later, that community, is making it’s mark on the Pomeroy’s new home.
“If you think about the framing of your house these are the bones and the community for me is the bones,” Pomeroy said.
Friends, neighbors and even firefighters signed messages onto the studs of the rebuild on Saturday.
“I wrote good luck with the rebuild, home bring you joy, come visit me in UBC, things like that,” said Ellen Berry, who lost her unincorporated Boulder County home to the fire. She met Reina through community advocacy afterwards.
“I feel like you have to put your goodwill into the house we had a lot of trauma and bad things happen, we have to build up good associations,” Somauroo said.
Something beautiful is forming out of the ashes.
“The greatest gift from the fire is the community that you meet,” Berry said. “When you meet people in the fire community, it’s real and immediate and authentic and genuine relationships.”
“It’s like a bringing together of our community and the people we care about. We’ve found this group of people through the fire and I feel so lucky that we have a new community,” Pomeroy said.
The Pomeroy family still needs to install drywall, mechanical fixtures and appliances to the home. They hope to be fully moved into their rebuilt home by the end of the year.
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