Oct. 24, 2020

The largest wildfires in Colorado history forced one of Sanford’s Good Samaritan Society locations to do a fast evacuation this week.

As the East Troublesome Fire approached Estes Park Village, it went from 19,000 acres to 120,000 acres overnight, growing by 6,000 acres per hour. It was estimated at more than 188,000 acres and 4 percent contained Saturday morning.

“They had to evacuate two mountain towns on the other side, and pretty quickly, so it’s alarming sitting in a mountain community and this fire is starting to come in your direction,” Good Samaritan administrator Julie Lee said.

Town leaders determined Good Samaritan Estes Park Village should evacuate on Thursday, “because of how many residents we had to move, to get them moved and into safety takes a little bit of coordination,” she said.

That’s especially true during a pandemic, as residents had to be safely spaced apart and wearing personal protective equipment.

Of the 108 residents, 62 were able to leave on their own or stay with family. The other 46 were moved to other Good Samaritan communities in the Colorado area.

“Typically I would need two large buses, and this time we needed five or six buses and vans to get everyone distanced,” Lee said. “Everyone had to wear PPE. You’re wearing a mask and the smoke is coming into town. Around 1 p.m. the smoke had come into Estes Valley and it felt like nighttime, it was so dark. It smelled like a big burning campfire as we were trying to mobilize people.”

From Sioux Falls, the national headquarters, a team helped coordinate communication with families, residents and media.

“We had very few phone calls to make,” Lee said. “They can do a lot of the groundwork … so all I had to do was focus on resident and staff safety.”

From there, it was bumper-to-bumper traffic leaving town.

“It was scary stuff,” said Randy Bury, Good Samaritan Society president and CEO.

“We’re fortunate we have a number of facilities in the area. We didn’t need to get a bunch of resources out there, because we have these facilities so fortunately it was mostly a logistical exercise and these are seasoned administrators. Julie Lee did an incredible job. She hung in there throughout the whole day and didn’t leave until the last shuttle bus with the last resident was going out of Estes Park.”

The Estes Park location, in the Rocky Mountain National Forest, is “gorgeous,” he said. “Everywhere you look, it’s a postcard view. To think of a fire going through that and ravaging the community is a terrible thought and we’re hoping and praying the weather can back off so that doesn’t occur.”

Today will be pivotal. Fire crews are contending with 60 mile per hour winds, before the temperatures are expected to drop and bring up to 20 inches of snow on Sunday.

“We’re just going to take that day by day and be really cautious because we don’t want to have to do an evacuation again,” Lee said. “I can’t say enough about the Good Samaritan national campus, the Front Range communities, they were just hands down amazing. Everyone is calling with support and saying, ‘We’ll get you whatever you need,’ and I feel really blessed to work for an organization like this.”