Hellfire

The sky is the color of puke, the air smells like old barbecue, the sun looks like it's bleeding as it shines through the smoke, and an entire mountain is on fire. I am not being poetic or exaggerating even a tiny bit; this is what the world looks like right now.

Having lived in Colorado basically all my life, I'm used to the annual forest fires that always happen during the summer. It's dry as fuck and super windy here because of the altitude, so naturally shit's gonna start burning. There's always a forest fire in the mountains and it's always a 'statewide crisis'  for about a day before they get things under control. I mean, last year, this canyon outside of Boulder caught fire and got a bit out of control, which was scary, but it got contained after about a week.

This fire is different. It's huge, it's uncontrollable, and it's actively destroying the homes of my friends. I wouldn't care if the fire was simply displacing people for a few days due to evacuations; that's usually what happens and then after a few days my friends can always go back home. But this fire is leaving no homes to go back to. It's already consumed over 40,000 acres and incinerated over 100 homes. The news is calling it a 'national crisis' and it's the second biggest fire recorded since Colorado became a state.

Technicolor Boy found out this morning that his parents' house--his childhood home--had been burned down. I was right there next to him. He didn't cry, although I wouldn't have blamed him if he did, he just got really quiet and stared at the floor for a while.

I wouldn't be able to handle something like that so quietly. This stupid fucking fire is destroying everything in its path.

When I was driving up to see him last night, I could see the whole thing from the highway. Literally, flames, distinct and growing, you could see it from over twenty miles away. The entire mountain was lit up, spewing acrid-looking smoke into the night sky. It was one of the most terrifyingly beautiful things I've ever seen in my life, then. Now, it's just disgusting.

The fire is at 0% containment, there are around 500 firefighters trying to slow its progress, even the National Guard has been called in. The Black Hawks that they deployed  to drop stuff on the fire aren't even making a dent.

The news is calling it the "High Park Fire: A Force to be Reckoned With"

No kidding, eh? Although, at this point, it seems as though the fire isn't so much being reckoned with as reasoned with. I don't know. It seems like nothing is working and this fire is unleashing its destructive force upon anything and everything that I care about.

I don't know why this is happening. What did Colorado do to deserve this? What did my friends do to deserve this?


Julia