LOVELAND, Colo. — The return home is devastating for families on Storm Mountain and Cedar Park, as they begin getting their first glimpses into the destruction and damage left by the Alexander Mountain Fire.
"It was their things and their life that is, you know, now, nothing but ash. It is hard," said Jerry Percell, a volunteer with Colorado Baptist Disaster Relief. "You've seen the pictures. We've all seen those pictures, and unfortunately, we're too familiar with fire here."
While families impacted by the fire are coming to terms with what happened, grieving what they lost, volunteers like Percell are waiting to help.
"What we do is we help in cases of disaster," he said.
Percell is a volunteer with Colorado Baptist Disaster Relief, an organization offering to sift through debris to help families find anything that may have survived the fire.
"We go in with the people, help them start to get a grasp, because they are totally disoriented, as you would be when all that you've known is just a pile of ash with some metal sticking out of it," Percell said.
Their biggest hope is they find items with the most sentimental value.
"People think they'll find things," Percell said. "A lot of times we do find, occasionally, jewelry, you know, wedding rings or something. We really look hard for those because they're so meaningful to people."
It's a process volunteers have become all too familiar with. They've been down this road before, helping families in the East Troublesome Fire and more recently, the Marshall Fire.
"You really need to support them and be empathetic to them," he said. "I think some of this will be similar, but on a much smaller scale."
Although the area burned by the Alexander Mountain Fire is smaller than others that have burned in the past, Percell acknowledges there's an equal amount of hurt for a community now forced to rebuild.