Some say Waldo Canyon fire recovery group could have done more
More than a year after the Waldo Canyon fire, the nonprofit Colorado Springs Together, created to guide the recovery of Mountain Shadows, has closed its doors and declared the bulk of its mission accomplished.
Opinions of its success are mixed. For some residents, the nonprofit's "store front" presence in Mountain Shadows was a home away from home where they felt safe amid the chaos of fire recovery. But the group's overall mission, some residents and one fire recovery manager say, was too narrow. While the group helped pave the way for the rebuilding of nearly 100 homes of the 347 destroyed, Mountain Shadows residents say the recovery is hardly over. Some residents have yet to resolve nightmares involving insurance and mortgages; they believe the nonprofit's private industry-based model for recovery was too limited in its scope and failed to accomplish what other recovery groups have done around the state.
From the start, Colorado Springs Together vowed not to become entangled in residents' insurance problems. While it had industry experts on hand to answer questions, it did not provide long-term neutral insurance guidance such as that received by survivors of the High Park, Black Forest and Fourmile Canyon fires.
El Paso County commissioners are launching their own recovery process for residents affected by the Black Forest fire, one they say will bear little resemblance to the Waldo Canyon fire model. They have brought in a nonprofit insurance advocacy group, United Policyholders, to give workshops for residents.
Bob Cutter, president of Colorado Springs Together, said the organization achieved its main mission: to give Mountain Shadows the momentum to rebuild itself. With nearly 100 homes rebuilt and more in the process, Cutter declared the recovery movement a success. While Cutter and his board will continue to meet monthly until December, Colorado Springs Together's center off Centennial Boulevard closed June 19.
Starting from scratch
Cutter, a jocular, efficient, long-time local businessman, likes to joke about how the nonprofit got started.
It began with a 6 a.m. phone call from Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach on June 27, the day after the Waldo Canyon fire ravaged Mountain Shadows. Cutter was out walking his dogs. The mayor needed help. Bach said he had no idea how to begin to help hundreds of people recover from the fire, and he asked Cutter to create a model and a method.
"The mayor said, 'Hey, great response by the first responders, police, fire, National Guard, and everybody else,'" Cutter recalled. "'But we don't have a policy that we can pull off the shelf. How do we do recovery?'"
Cutter spent the rest of that day poring over Federal Emergency Management Agency documents and studying various recovery groups, and learned a few key things. Ultimately, there were only two things he could reasonably expect to provide: speedy response and good information.
The FEMA documents were rife with themes for recovery but had few specifics. Cutter was tasked with learning how fire-ravaged communities in California and New Mexico had recovered.
He was surprised when he contacted Los Alamos, N.M., which lost 235 homes to the Cerro Grande fire in 2000.
"We were shocked to find that they hadn't documented anything," Cutter said. "Then we kind of reached out through the insurance industry to get some contacts in California, and then again we didn't get any response."
Instead, Cutter started from scratch and did what he knew how to do.
He created a private industry-based recovery model, with a center at the heart of Mountain Shadows. Rather than using governmental entities to drive recovery decisions, Cutter's team of building industry, health department, and insurance professionals charted the course.
Cutter, who ran the group as a volunteer, pooled a group of influential people, from city officials to El Paso County Health Department employees, to manage the challenges of rebuilding.
Cutter's model made sense for Colorado Springs, said George Betz, FEMA's individual assistance branch director for the fire. Each long-term recovery group works best when it models how the community wants to come together to recover, he said.
In Colorado Springs, where private industry has a powerful presence, it was "quite natural" for a long-term recovery group to include the private sector, Betz said.
Cutter estimates that 95 percent of Colorado Springs Together's money came from corporations such as Comcast, CenturyLink and Credit Union of Colorado. The group amassed $320,000, and $50,000 was spent June 26 on the one-year anniversary of the firestorm. About $50,000 from the El Pomar Foundation and $10,000 from the Colorado Fire Relief Fund was spent on rent for the center, utility bills, the salary for one paid employee, office supplies, and creating the group's website, Cutter said. The nonprofit's Internal Revenue Service document that breaks down how money was spent will be available in August.
One of the nonprofit's largest private industry partners was GE Johnson, one of the region's largest construction companies. Cutter called long-time friend Jim Johnson, the company's president and CEO, and asked for the company's help rebuilding Mountain Shadows. Johnson wanted to help.
"There was no agenda," Johnson said, and the committee's "first couple of meetings were rough in nature."
"We were just trying to figure out our role - what can we do, what can we impact," Johnson said. The group met weekly for months.
Cutter wanted action. He wanted data and communication. By July 3, Cutter and his board decided that the first step would be eliminating the debris - the remains of homes, cars, landscaping.
"One of the most visible signs of the fire that people wanted to see gone was the debris," Cutter said. "From our first or second meeting, we started thinking, 'How do we get the debris out of there?'"
The team chose to sell debris removal like a product and, "drawing on parallels from industry," they gave Mountain Shadows a prototype. GE Johnson offered to clear the debris on two lots as an example of what could be done.
Johnson said he twice rejected the suggestion that his company could demonstrate debris removal. Initially, he thought the risk was "unmanageable" for a job he wasn't getting paid for, but he eventually agreed.
As the fire cleanup got underway, GE Johnson made 269 bids for work. In the end, it pulled 74 permits for debris removal and was a partner on another 100 permits. It made about $250,000 off debris removal jobs, Johnson said.
"It wasn't about turning profit," Johnson said. "This was a wholesome and well-intended effort and I'm proud to be a part of that, and it worked out great."
All sorts of help was needed
While Cutter had placed a premium on quickly clearing the neighborhood of fire debris, he and Johnson soon learned that rebuilding the houses would not equal recovery for the community.
"Coming out of the industry I did, the semi-conductor business, we're driven by speed," Cutter said.
Not all Mountain Shadows residents could be rushed.
"We had incorrect ideas as to how fast we could move," Cutter said. "We quickly learned that there has to be that pull from the community. The community is going to drive that."
Colorado Springs Together had to focus on its mission of aiding the rebuilding efforts and helping with community morale. It provided "one-stop-shopping" for residents who needed help. It hosted homeowners association meetings, support group meetings, and the anniversary ceremony attended by thousands.
For Gloria Horne, who lost her home in Parkside, the Colorado Springs Together center was a shelter, a place where she could crash on a couch, grab some food, and get help.
"I got everything from them. If it hadn't been for CST, I'd still be drowning," Horne said at a Colorado Springs Together meeting Thursday night.
But there were certain things the group didn't do, such as get involved with the insurance process.
"From the start we did not want to get in the middle of that relationship" between homeowners and their insurance companies, Cutter said.
Instead, Cutter helped organize a large insurance information session for fire victims at the Marriott Hotel in August. Jim Reisberg, the former commissioner of the state's Division of Insurance, told residents that they were their own best advocates when it came to insurance.
Colorado Springs Together had at least three retired insurance industry representatives at its center and also provided space for insurance company meetings among homeowners.
Some frustrated homeowners reached out to other counties for insurance advice. Nearly six months after the Waldo Canyon fire, they asked the nonprofit insurance advocacy group United Policyholders to give lectures on the insurance process. The group had already talked to people whose homes burned in Larimer and Boulder counties.
By not providing long-term insurance advice for homeowners, Colorado Springs Together violated a basic tenant for a smooth recovery, said Gary Sanfacon, fire recovery manager for Boulder County.
Sanfacon said he learned after the 2010 Four Mile Canyon fire that providing a guiding light in the insurance process is invaluable. Sanfacon said the second-most important aspect of fire recovery is to call United Policyholders.
"Bring United Policyholders in because insurance becomes the biggest obstacle for people returning to a normal life," Sanfacon said. "Get people back to a normal life, working, going to school. It helps the economy. It can help rebuild."
At first, Boulder County was overwhelmed by suggestions for help and ignored calls from United Policyholders, Sanfacon said. Eventually, he called the group.
"The settlement process is inhuman for someone who has been through a traumatic event like that," Sanfacon said. "For someone to be advocating for them, that was one of the most important interventions we did in Boulder County."
Cutter said he wanted to avoid insurance advocacy groups with lawyers or public adjustors at their cores. But United Policyholders is also staffed by several California residents who lost their homes. "They get it," Sanfacon said.
United Policyholders is running insurance information workshops for residents who lost their homes in the Black Forest fire.
County creating own model
Although many communities across the West have been devastated by wildfires, there's no formula for recovery. Each community does it differently.
The Waldo Canyon fire created a complicated intermingling of county, city, state and federal officials.
Colorado Springs Together's center is a model other fire recovery groups should adopt, Sanfacon said.
"I think it's a great model," Sanfacon said. "It didn't fit our population demographic. But I suggested that with Black Forest, that they set up a one-stop shop for that."
Sanfacon, who visited Colorado Springs Together a few times and offered his expertise, urged Cutter and El Paso County commissioners to work together. But aside from creating a Black Forest and Waldo Canyon fire mentoring program, the two groups have yet to discuss lessons learned from the Waldo Canyon fire recovery process.
The county is not creating a nonprofit model similar to Colorado Springs Together to assist Black Forest fire recovery. Instead, it is delegating recovery tasks to subcommittees, said Commissioner Darryl Glenn.
"We made a policy decision up front as a board" to not follow the city's model, Glenn said.
"Primarily it's because we can provide different services that the city can't provide. We created a subcommittee structure based on different county systems. They fit nicely into the long-term recovery plan," Glenn said.
The process for debris removal will be different, Glenn said, and commissioners will not give residents suggestions for contractors.
"We are very careful that we do not want to get into specific vendor references, to steer people toward one contractor or another.," Glenn said.
Nor does Glenn like Colorado Springs Together's idea to have a company model debris removal.
"That's another area where we don't feel comfortable," Glenn said. "We would have to go through an entire competitive process to do something like that."
Glenn plans to host a series of public meetings starting in August - something the city and Colorado Springs Together did not do.
Sanfacon said it is crucial to reach out to affected people, to host clubs or support groups, and to listen to people's questions, concerns and frustrations.
"We don't, as government, we don't know what all the needs are," he said.
Boulder County started every meeting with a public comment period, Sanfacon said.
Even though Colorado Springs did not hold formal meetings to gather public comments, Cutter said he spent the past year listening to Mountain Shadows residents. He was able to help some, but not all.
"I think, as I have come to learn, there are two things that I will take away from this," he said. "Number one, the incredibly wide range of human emotion that comes out when a disaster hits. I think we all somewhat tend to think, quite wrongly obviously, of people as monolithic in their response to a situation."
The second lesson: "I think being able to deal with that, you quickly understand that everybody is going to go at their own pace."
By December, Colorado Springs Together will be gone. Its website, with months' worth of emails and material, will freeze. The bulk of its remaining projects, such as the Mountain Shadows Park renovation and a memorial to Bill and Barbara Everett, who died in the Waldo Canyon fire, will be passed on to the Mountain Shadows Community Association.
Although some residents are months away from even deciding whether to rebuild, Cutter is walking away having achieved what he set out to, he said.
"Mission accomplished."
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