NEDERLAND, Colo. (KDVR) — In such a small, tight knit community, the impact of the Nederland shopping center fire is devastating. Business owners lost their livelihoods, and the community is rallying behind them to help.
Footage captured what Nederland resident Dan Vollmer woke up to Thursday morning.
“Just sat up in my, in my bed and looked over and the entirety of the shopping center was already on fire,” Dan Vollmer said. “That’s half our businesses in town. You know, for a lot of people, it’s just a place to stop by after they go jumping or go fishing or hiking to get a margarita at Trace. But for me, that’s a place where I can go watch the sports game at Backcountry and have a beer with some of my best friends.”
Best friends, business owners and neighbors who embraced each other at the fire scene Thursday with their livelihoods destroyed in front of them.
“Jeff and Susan who started ‘Very Nice,’ you know, that’s their baby,” Vollmer said. “John who owned ‘Mountain Man,’ that’s his entire life there. Doug, who gives so much back to the community through music and donating lessons and instruments to children. Like all of that is just gone. You know, the owners of ‘Tres Gringos,’ they just got married last weekend and they’re on their way back now. And it’s just it’s heartbreaking to know that after so much joy, there’s just devastation there.”
Jill Dreves is the founder of Wild Bear Nature Center, a nonprofit focused on connecting people to nature that was completely devastated in the fire.
“I’m sad, very sad,” Dreves said. “It’s a very sad day for our community. Wild Bear’s been a staple in our community at that site for 15 years. We’ve been building this new nature center just on the north end of town, and that one is 75% complete. So we you know, we have a job to do that to be sure we can finish that building and get our whole program back and growing.”
Along with the nature center, Wild Bear’s animals inside were taken from her and the community.
“Westie, our Western painted turtle and then two salamanders, Sal and Sally and Luna our snake, 70 cockroaches,” Dreves said. “I just am grateful that no human lives were lost, not that they’re anything less than that. These beautiful animals that have been ambassadors for us, educators for us, helping people understand how you can be better stewards to the planet and how much we should just admire and love and know what we should do with keeping them around.”
Wild Bear now has a fire relief fund you can find here.
“It’s just something that means everything to this community because all the people that live and work there are our community,” Vollmer said.
Vollmer made this GoFundMe that gained tens of thousands of dollars in donation in just hours.
“My first thought was, I want to make sure that the business owners and the employees that are going to be affected aren’t going to be starving,” Vollmer said. “You know, they’re not going to be wanting for rent or figuring out how to pay their phone bill. And I’m really hoping we can double our goal because that’s half the businesses in town that are going to need food on their table, a roof over their head, and they have nowhere to go. You know, we don’t have the development up here that a town down the hill will. And so it’s really going to impact our future in the short term.”
Police and fire crews are still investigating the fire and were still putting out hot spots as of about 5 p.m. on Thursday.
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