Where’s Waldo?

The climate disaster that vanished from Colorado’s memory.

Evacuees watch as the Waldo Canyon fire races towards their homes.

The Waldo Canyon Fire changed my life. In 2012, I watched from my sister’s bedroom window as the fire jumped a ridge and came roaring towards my home. Mandatory evacuation was called and my family left with as many precious items as two car trunks could carry.

I distinctly remember seeing orange clouds above my neighborhood, feeling the heat from the flames, and not knowing whether I would ever return home.

In the end, our house was spared. Three hundred and forty-six others were not. Once the fire was contained and extinguished, I returned to find a scarred mountain, leveled neighborhoods, and a city claiming a new sense of community. Those claims, however, were short lived.

Rather than having a much needed conversation about climate change, we endured calls for Godliness and actionless prayers. Martin Drake, the coal plant which has been poisoning downtown Colorado Springs for decades, kept burning coal. Then-Governor John Hickenlooper, a petroleum engineer and life-long advocate of fossil fuels won re-election in 2014 without a serious primary challenger.

Instead of considering the impacts of climate change and forest mismanagement on the fire, I remember people claiming it was caused by Satanists, or even that is was a divine punishment by God Himself.

Now, seven years after the fire, climate change has all but vanished from Colorado’s mainstream discourse — in spite of our continued vulnerability to its impacts. Anti-fracking movements have faced defeat across the state, from Amendment 112 (to setback oil and gas drilling a larger distance from schools), to dozens of local initiatives. Colorado’s current Governor, Jared Polis, dropped his support for an amendment to ban fracking in 2014 — just two years after Waldo Canyon.

Between the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest Fires, Colorado Springs lost more than 500 homes in less than two years. This could have been a turning point in the fight against climate change. It should have rattled the political status-quo to its core. But it didn’t. In spite of the tireless efforts of activists, and because of the inaction of corporate stooges, that shift never happened.

The Waldo Canyon Fire changed my life — but it hardly changed anything in Colorado.