For Nigel Thompson, the 2013 Black Forest fire not only destroyed his home but set forth ripples that would dramatically transform his life.He recounts those years after the fire in “Fire Survivor: A Personal Story of the Black Forest Fire.” As he notes in a summary of the book, “Itís not guidance or life advice or any of that stuff,” but it does offer a message of hope for others who have been through a disaster.Thompson came from England to the United States in 1989 to work for Microsoft. “I intended to be here a couple of years,” he said in an email. “But I’m still here.”He worked first in the Seattle area; after a year, his wife had “had enough of me, the country, the people, and was terribly homesick for her family and friends,” he writes in his book. They split up and she returned to England.Thompson remarried and became a parent; he and his family left Seattle for Colorado in 1996 “for some sunshine and the mountains.” He found Black Forest “by accident while looking at property listings in Colorado in general and later around Colorado Springs,” he said in his email.They moved into a grand house “large and sprawling” at 7,500 square feet and on a 40-acre lot; later they added another 20 acres. One of the first things Thompson did was have the trees on the property thinned out to a specification he had gotten from the Forest Service. Years later, he topped the house with fire-retardant roof tiles. But, as he told an Associated Press reporter after the fire, ìIt didnít make a damn difference at the end of the day.”His home was lost to the fire, along with a couple of outbuildings. The family’s two horses died, along with two horses that a neighbor had placed with the Thompson horses.Thompson was at work when he heard about the fire; his wife and younger daughter were in Oregon visiting his older daughter, who was due to graduate from college in a few days. Thompson rushed home and retrieved two fire safes, a small one containing backup computer discs and a large one that required him to use his tractor to get it into his truck. He grabbed a few more items, then fled with the sight of flames in his rear-view mirror.In a chapter titled “Lessons Learned,” Thompson stresses the importance of having a disaster plan in place. “I’m a pretty rational guy,” he wrote, “and I don’t get flustered by much, but I still managed to be very stupid on the day of the fire and left behind photo albums and a big computer disc I could easily have grabbed and put in my truck. It’s really, really hard to remember stuff when your head is exploding with messages telling you to get out of the house because there is a BIG FIRE outside.”One thing that helped them in dealing with the insurance company is that Thompson’s wife, after the Waldo Canyon fire, created a photo record of everything they owned. The 1,200 photographs were on a laptop she had taken with her to Oregon.”Our insurance story was essentially a happy one,” Thompson wrote. “We got the money owed to us from our policy and we used that to build a new house. Other people were by no means as lucky. If you’re reading this and have not suffered a disaster like ours, it’s time to look at your policy and maybe ask some questions about what exactly it covers and whether the policy value is going to let you recover your home and belongings if they are suddenly not there one day.”One question they faced was where to live while they rebuilt. While the insurance company offered to rent them a comparable house for a year, Thompson decided to use that money to buy a trailer to live in ñ- a decision he came to regret.ìOverall, I’d say that the idea of us living in the trailer was terrible,î he said. ìWe had a lot of tension caused by our ordeal and the small space. We got into arguments about stuff that were so much more intense because you can’t move. There is no pacing around. You just stand there and argue.”With two kids out of the house and the last one soon off to college, Thompson and his wife decided on a more modest home in rebuilding. The new home, less than half the size of the original, took about a year to build. But Thompson found himself alone in the house when his marriage crumbled.More change would follow: quitting his job, selling the new house and moving to an even smaller home in Woodland Park, training for and running the Pikes Peak Ascent at age 61, finding happiness in traveling and living a simpler life.”The loss from a fire is terrible,” he said in his email. “In an odd way it was good for me.” He was inspired to write the book, he said, “Because I kept seeing news of other fires and thought that my story might inspire someone to keep going. I know many people can’t just do what I did, but the message is that you can survive. I did.”
