When the Unthinkable Happens to You – January 24, 2022

On December 30, 2021, I found myself in an unimaginable position.

My son and I were driving west on I-80 through Nebraska, returning from a holiday trip to see family in Wisconsin. As he drove, I received a reverse 911 call, informing us that we were being ordered to evacuate our home in Superior, Colorado, immediately.

We began to stream our local news on my phone. We listened for about an hour to reports of our neighborhood being overtaken by fire fueled by 110 mph wind gusts that persisted for hours.  It’s being referred to as an “urban firestorm”.   I quickly reached the point where I just couldn’t stomach the news anymore and had to turn it off, switching to calming music to carry us through the rest of the drive.

My son drove as I nervously scanned social media for any information as to whether our home had been destroyed. I tried my best to surrender to the situation. Of course, there was nothing I could do to impact whether the fire consumed our home or not (a harsh reminder that control is always an illusion).

As I scrolled, my brain tried to process the images I was seeing on my phone: schools, hospitals, grocery stores, hotels, entire neighborhoods… all engulfed in flames. Places I knew and frequented, vanished into ash.

Evacuation

I made an attempt at breathing deeply for the last 5 ½ hours of the trip home. This practice allowed me to drive and keep calm for the sake of my son, though on the inside I felt a frenzy of emotions as my brain was overcome with, “what if’s?”

When we finally arrived at our place of evacuation for the night, my entire body was shaking uncontrollably with all the pent-up emotion I was holding just below the surface.  My heart rate stayed elevated for a week and sleep was hard to come by.

Research shows that most people can only readily name three emotions: happiness, sadness, and anger. The mix of emotions I felt during this ordeal were new to me, much more complex than a simple, “happy, sad, or mad.”

It felt like there was a block of concrete in my stomach… with a giant black hole in it that extended down to the core of the earth. It was the darkest, strongest thing I have ever felt. It was as if someone literally pulled the earth out from beneath me.

Vulnerability, fear, despair, dread, worry, anxiety, overwhelm, stress, avoidance, confusion, anguish, hopelessness, sadness, grief, comparative suffering, loneliness, and devastation swirled deep within my being. Sometimes one feeling would come up stronger, then another, and sometimes I felt everything at once.

I had to consult the list of 87 emotions in Brené Brown’s new NYT #1 bestselling book, Atlas of the Heart, for help in naming all the emotions I felt. I realized that there is no word for what a human experiences when flooded with 17 different emotions. “Unimaginable” is the best I can come up with right now.

Aftermath

While we remained evacuated for nearly a week, I had visual confirmation within one day that our house was still standing. 1,000 of my neighbor’s houses were not.

The burn area came within 1/8 – 1/4 mile of our house; unimaginable for a suburban neighborhood like ours. We live on a main road that goes right by a huge shopping mall, a very populated and highly trafficked area. We never imagined we would be in danger of wildfire… and yet, a park and an entire row of houses on the other side of our street were destroyed by flames.  In the blocks just north and west of us, entire communities are gone.

In the days after the fire, my day-to-day to-do list also felt unimaginable:

• Drain our pipes and turn off our water so the pipes wouldn’t burst due to no heat and temps near zero

  
  

• Visit the Disaster Assistance Center to talk to FEMA

  
  

• Deal with my insurance company to learn about smoke/soot mitigation

  
  

• Drive an hour across town to find air purifiers in stock

  
  

• Drive through the line for free lunches & bottled water at the Community Center because there was no potable water, and I was simply too exhausted to cook anyway (what an incredible reminder as to how hard it is to receive help)

  
  

• Shiver in our 49-degree house next to a space heater as I waited all day and evening for Xcel Energy to show up to turn on the heat… (Xcel literally had to go house by house to relight the pilot light and do a safety check)

  
  

• Hire someone to test our indoor air quality, take surfaces samples, and check the attic, crawl space and insulation for soot

  
  

• Hire someone to clean the windowsills, furnace, and air ducts

  
  

• Wash or replace the drapes, shower curtains, comforters, anything made of fabric that holds smoke and toxins

  
  

• Drive the daily carpool with two stops at hotels to pick up kids who cannot yet return to their homes (fortunately, they will be able to eventually)

As I write this, it has been nearly three weeks since the fire. My emotions still come in waves and, though not all 17 at one time, I still feel a constant pull of emotions in conflict with one another.

I feel despair that my neighbors aren’t okay…and relief that we are.

I feel anguish for the charred region of our town I drive through every day, and for the conflict-ridden process of rebuilding that is just beginning …and awe for the outpouring of support within, and for, our community.

I feel heartbroken hearing the stories of tremendous loss (like wedding rings and purple hearts) …and grateful for the stories of heroism (like the water plant worker who risked his life to ensure the firefighters maintained water in their hoses).

I thought I would be beyond these deeply challenging emotions by now. I expected myself to bounce back with my usual positivity and high energy, but I cannot “power through” this traumatic experience. No one can. This will be with us forever, and it will take as long as it takes to heal.

What Does This Have to do With Leadership?

This experience has shifted something deep within me. I have a deeper level of compassion and empathy for the many, many other citizens of our world who have experienced such devastation… fires, floods, shootings, earthquakes, and other unimaginable events.

We are not the first. We will not be the last.

As leaders, it is our responsibility to walk through the world assuming that someone on our team, in our company, or on our block is going through something unimaginable. Live your life and lead with compassion, empathy, kindness, and curiosity. Be the kind of business who proactively owns their role in improving the challenges our world faces.  Be the person who supports, helps, uplifts, and listens.

I am immensely grateful to all those who have done this for me over the past weeks. Thank you for reading.