One day after a fire destroyed a shopping center in the small Colorado town of Nederland, community members are rallying around the small businesses that lost everything.
CBS
“What can I see? All the hopes and dreams that I’ve had for the last 15 years in a pile of dirt and smoke,” said Doug Armitage, the owner of Brightwood Music, which was among the business destroyed in the fire.
Armitage was looking at what was left of his livelihood when he met with CBS Colorado.
“Brightwood Music was the name of the store that is no more,” Armitage said.
Armitage says Brightwood Music was both his passion and a pillar of the community.
“We did lessons. We did classes,” Armitage explained. “We did a lot of repairs to musical instruments for a lot of professionals that live here in town, and we’re the resource for the school system.”
But, on the morning of the fire, Armitage’s wife saw the shopping center ablaze at 4 a.m. on her way to the airport.
“She called me and said that the whole store was on fire,” Armitage recalled. “Everything was on fire. It’s all gone. It’s all gone.”
Armitage rushed to the store but couldn’t do anything but watch the fast-spreading fire.
“Horror, really, disbelief,” Armitage said. “Just started running through all the different things that, you know, I might have done if I had gotten here 15, 20 minutes sooner.”
Armitage says $400,000 worth of precious instruments were lost, including a violin his great-grand uncle brought to the U.S. during World War II.
“He came over escaping Hitler and moved to New Jersey, and he gave me the instrument when he died, and that’s been in the family now for many, many years,” Armitage said.
Next to Brightwood Music, Wild Bear Nature Center was also destroyed.
The center has held educational programs for 30 years, and is home to many animal ambassadors.
“We had two salamanders, Sal and Sally, a turtle named Westie, a snake named Luna, scorpion named Vinnie, and then 70 Madagascar hissing cockroaches, some crickets and some rolly pollies all inside,” said Frankie Beard, director of educational operations at Wild Bear Nature Center.
Tragically, all of the animals perished in the fire.
“Broke me to tears thinking of my animals inside that we all really cared about. They had such rich personalities,” Beard said. “I think it’s the hardest part to think about is thinking about what the animals had to experience, and that they were trapped in there, and, obviously, we keep them enclosed into their enclosure, so they had no way to escape, and that’s a really hard thing for us to have to think about. But, you know, we use that as an opportunity to talk about what fire does in the natural world.”
The nature center was already in the process of building a new facility, and Beard says the fire won’t stop their mission.
“Despite the fact that our center is no longer there, we always have the outdoors, so we can continue programming in that way,” Beard said.
They’ve already raised $60,000, and an anonymous donor has offered to match $150,000 of donations.
Armitage isn’t giving up either.
“I’d like to continue doing something for the town. It’s kind of important to me and important to the town to have a music store here,” Armitage said.
The B & F Mountain Market grocery store also shares the same location as the shops destroyed in Nederland, but it’s not in line with them and was undamaged. It will reopen Monday, Oct. 13.
Brightwood Music already has plans to move into a smaller space across the street. The problem is Armitage has no instruments to fill his store with. Like the community as a whole, it will be a long journey for Brightwood Music and Wild Bear Nature Center to rebuild.
“Nederland comes together in a really special way,” beard said. “There’s people who don’t even live here anymore who are giving to Wild Bear and to the other organizations and businesses that were lost. So we’re very grateful to have such a strong and tight community.”
