The Passive Solar Home that Survived the Sugarloaf Mountain Fire

Enlarge Image Image Gallery A firefighter works to contain blazes as they descend on Bill and Deann’s home on Sugarloaf Mountain. Photo by The Denver Post

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After several days of triple-digit temperatures, the thermometer had again soared to 100 degrees in Boulder, Colorado, on July 9, 1989, and stiff, dry winds blew up out of Black Tiger Gulch. No relief was in sight from the month of rainless days as neighbors on Sugarloaf Mountain prepared to gather for a Sunday picnic sponsored by the volunteer fire department. Up on Lost Angel Road, Susan and Tom sat on their patio planning their honeymoon in Italy. Bill puttered around in his greenhouse while his wife, Deann, ran errands in town. Betty decided it was too hot and windy to weed her garden and instead sat on the front porch, watching the tree swallows and the wrens feed their families in the bird­houses and talking to Dirty Face, the squirrel who nested in the front wall of her cabin.

Betty’s partner, Rolland, a Colorado native, had been talking all summer about the ripe conditions for a forest fire, so Betty wasn’t all that surprised to look out and see a column of smoke stretching across the sky due south of the cabin. A neighbor who had a better view of the fire making its way up Black Tiger Gulch called and advised Betty to leave. Meanwhile, another neighbor called Tom and Susan to enlist their help in saving a home that was threatened by the fledgling inferno. As they headed toward the house, they were stopped by a volunteer firefighter, who told them to get long pants and shovels to help build a fire line. By the time Tom and Susan had changed their clothes, the blaze had chimneyed to the top of Pisgah Mountain and was crashing in waves down the other side toward their own home. The sun had become an otherworldly red disk in the black, smoky sky, and an intense gust singed Tom’s eyebrows. “Get your toothbrush,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll be sleeping here tonight.”

Deann had seen the smoke on the mountain from town and rushed back up just before officials closed the road. She found Bill in a panic, pounding the hose against the driveway. He couldn’t get the nozzle off, and he wanted to spray down their shake roof. In two hours, the fire had blazed a three-mile path and had reached the ridge just above their home. Helicopters buzzed overhead; B-52 bombers dropped red clouds of fire retardant. In this war-zone atmosphere, Bill and Deann put their cats in pillowcases and made some quick decisions about what items they couldn’t live without. They loaded some clay pots, Navajo rugs, and their espresso maker into the car. On the way out the door, Bill grabbed their teenage daughter Molly’s report card, which had been magneted to the refrigerator. They thought they would never again see the home they had built with their own hands.

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