The Comenole Family

It has been a long road...For those of you who don't know...The morning of December 30, 2021 started out like any other normal day. I was working from home. My husband and the kids were on vacation from school and work...just relaxing, drinking hot cocoa, and chatting about Balthazar Getty (of all people). But at 12:13 our lives changed forever. My husband started yelling that he saw flames. The flames were in our backyard and very tall, like the size of a two-story house. I told him to round up the kids because we had to leave. And I called 911. When I told the operator that there was fire in our back yard, she said, "I am going to ask you again, do you see flames?" I said yes and she hung up on me. She had no idea that there was a fire anywhere near us and she actually hung up on me! We tried to grab our cats, but they were very scared and ran away. All of my children had left in their jammies and without winter coats. My oldest and my youngest left even without shoes on their feet. We grabbed nothing...no computers, no ids, no clothes...nothing. By 12:16 (3 minutes after we saw the fire) we were driving down the road out of our neighborhood, away from our house not knowing what we would come back to. The minutes, hours and days to follow were some of the most traumatic of my life and surely that of my four children's. The next couple of hours were a blur. We first drove to the mall to "wait it out". My husband was covered in soot and ash and we began to realize that this wasn't just a small thing. Throughout the day, we were evacuated from shelter after shelter as the fire continued to spread. Late in the evening we were told to head to the airport and stay at an airport hotel. Over the next couple of days, we waited for the final word that our house was gone. Our house was in the neighborhood that was hardest and first hit and not a single house was left standing. In a matter of minutes, we lost not only our house and all of our things...but we lost those irreplaceable items too...trophies and awards, family photographs, the blankets I sewed for my children when they were babies, the moments in our lives that we treasured enough to save mementos from...all of the presents my children had received for Christmas only days before...our Christmas tree with ornaments that we had collected for over 20 years...the effects of this loss will be felt by each of us for years to come. ####### This page is being organized as a part of a larger support effort for those impacted by the devastating Marshall Fire. Each family has set up their own Amazon Wishlist (linked here) with the specific items they need. You can order directly from their Wishlist, or send a digital gift card to be delivered directly to the family. Who is organizing these efforts? I am Meryl Suissa and I started Boulder Fire and Surrounding Areas Victims Distribution Page. The name is so long because I started this before we even knew the fire had the name the Marshall Fire. Over the past 25 days (at the time of writing this), we have helped 115 families. We as a group have raised over $10,000 in monetary donations, plus provided typical post-disaster relief by providing emergency funding, food and paying for shelter, we have filled as many wishlists as the 3500 of us can. But what has made us really unique is our ability to offer hope and provide human connection One member said- You are connecting people so an afghan blanket crocheted by a grandmother can be remade, reconnecting a family with a fragment of a christmas card plus we have organized and thrown many birthday parties complete with swag bags and balloon artists, we have replaced specific nostalgic mugs and provided a sense of community. I have vetted each one of these families using their address, the lost home address and forms of address verification. We have a very strict process.