By Pat Kondas, American Red Cross of Colorado and Wyoming Public Affairs
On December 31, Gudrum Emrich and her husband Aloke Guha were in Las Vegas at a family gathering celebrating her daughter’s thirtieth birthday. That day, they learned the Marshall Fire back in Louisville, Colorado had rendered them homeless. Social media was filled with pictures of homes burning, and friends contacted her with the bad news. Gudrum said, “People said ‘we drove by your house and it’s gone.’” They sent pictures of her street. “We had a friend from our neighborhood who drove to our house and he picked up two coffee cups that had survived. He called us and he was crying.” Returning to Colorado, they lived with her younger daughter in Denver for three weeks until finding an apartment in Broomfield.
Besides having to find temporary housing, they are beginning to assess their losses from the fire. Both Gudrum and her husband worked from home offices, and they are trying to reconstruct data and documents lost in the fire. She had her current clients’ information on a computer with her, so that was saved, though she says other information may be harder to recover. But she says, while they lost “stuff – a lot of stuff, including baby pictures, family pictures, and memorabilia, and things that have sentimental value…we have heard from so many people who want to be helpful.”
Three or four days after the fire, Gudrum and Aloke finally contacted the Red Cross Disaster Recovery Center. She says, “We kind of waltzed in there in a daze. I was surprised and a little bit shell-shocked when I walked in. There were so many stations, so many people and so many things that could be done for us.” She says, “We were welcomed warmly. We were told that we would be supported; and we were encouraged to leave our information. And then we were called back later by various people who said ‘Okay, what do you need? What did you lose? How can we help you?’”
Gudrum said, “I come from a history of ‘just suck it up and move through it.’ That’s the way I was raised and it’s very, very hard for me to accept help.” She and Aloke have given to the Red Cross in the past, and Gudrum says, “It’s really important for us to give back [to the community]. It’s very hard for us to be in the position where we need to take. Giving is such a pleasure. Taking…not so much.”
Gudrum said she was very pleased with the support from the Red Cross and said, “Once I’m back on my feet, we’ll be back to supporting the Red Cross as we did before, because I do feel it’s a very important mission.”