Fire. Ashes. Rebirth: One performer’s journey in the aftermath of the Marshall Fire

Fallon Vooheis-Mathews performs with her “fire” silk Photo: Giles Clasen

By Giles Clasen

Last month, Fallon Voorheis-Mathews took the stage with her aerial dance company, “In the Wings,” at the Mizel Arts and Culture Center at the Jewish Community Center to share “Embers, Petals, and Stars,” an aerial and dance performance. The first act, “Fire.Ashes.Rebirth,” is shaped by Voorheis- Mathews’ experience of losing her house and rebuilding after the Marshall Fire.

“It’s for me, closure,” she said. “But it’s also for other people. I want those who went through this to feel seen. And I want those who didn’t, to understand how much this takes from you.”

A LIFE IN MOTION

Movement has been part of Voorheis-Mathews’ life for as long as she can remember. She started ballet at age 2, but it wasn’t love at first pointe shoe and tutu. 

Fallon Voorheis-Mathews and Ashley Eaves Sonnier rehearse for “Embers, Petals, and Stars” Photo: Rudy Ortega

“My mom put me into gymnastics when I was 3 because I was climbing over our first-floor balcony,” she said.

Gymnastics became her focus until an injury at age 14 ended her competitive career. But she refused to quit because movement made Voorheis-Mathews feel whole. She begrudgingly returned to ballet.

“I still hate ballet. But it’s one of those things, ballet makes you better at the other forms of dance,” she said.

Voorheis-Mathews gravitated toward modern and jazz dance. The styles gave her more room to explore. She majored in theater and minored in dance at Mesa State in Grand Junction. When Voorheis-Mathews found aerial, her foundation in gymnastics and dance shaped her approach.

“Having grown up doing gymnastics and dance, it’s kind of like the combination of both of those, and a lot easier on my body,” she said. “To get to use that [art form] to tell a story and bring the community together through art is something different and special to me.”

Dance had long been a way for her to process experiences, connect with others, and feel fully herself.

“The culture is lifting each other up,” she said. “It’s just pulling each other together. Aerial brought it all together.” 

“THERE’S A FIRE IN MARSHALL”

Voorheis-Mathews was at a mountain cabin with her husband, Fleetwood Mathews and their two dogs, the day the Marshall Fire burned across Boulder County in 2021.

Then, the texts started.

“I got a text from my coworker that said, ‘Hey, is everything okay over there?’” Voorheis-Mathews said.

“She didn’t know I wasn’t at home. A few minutes later, my husband came in and said, ‘There’s a fire in Marshall.’” 

At first, the two dismissed it. Grass fires weren’t uncommon. They flared up and were quickly put out. But this one wasn’t like the others. A downslope windstorm blew 100-mile-per-hour winds across the Boulder County foothills, pushing the fire quickly into neighborhoods the morning of December 30, 2021. Evacuation messages were sent to 35,000 residents within the fire’s path. Within hours, more than 1,000 homes burned, including Voorheis-Mathews. 

“We went from thinking it wasn’t a big deal to realizing just how bad it was, and how fast [it was moving],” she said. “From what we could piece together, our street was already on fire by 12:30 p.m.”

They debated returning home to save what they could. By mid-afternoon, they knew it was too late.

They stayed glued to the news while Mathews started a claim with the insurance company that afternoon.

Meanwhile, their home smoldered. Late that night, Mathew’s mother drove to the house to see the damage firsthand and update the couple.

“At 1 in the morning, she called and said it was all gone,” Voorheis-Mathews said. “We didn’t sleep. I started looking at house plans, ready to rebuild. I think both of us just jumped to the thought, ‘Let’s fix it.’”

UP IN FLAMES

The house Voorheis-Mathews and her husband lost to the fire wasn’t new, but it was theirs. Built decades earlier and recently renovated by the previous owners, it had quirks and features they wouldn’t have chosen, like a fish tank in the bar and a fireplace in the bathroom. But it checked the boxes that mattered.

“My husband came across the property while working part-time as a realtor,” Voorheis-Mathews said. “We weren’t really looking for a house, but it was on an acre, and it had space.”

The home had one special amenity that Voorheis-Mathews couldn’t pass up: a barn. For Voorheis-Mathews, the barn offered a private setting with a high ceiling where she could mount her aerial rig and rehearse.

Voorheis-Mathews began aerial dance in 2010 after discovering a Groupon for a class at Frequent Flyers in Boulder.

“I thought it would be a fun date. My boyfriend, now husband, and I went together,” Voorheis-Mathews said.

By 2011, she was performing, and soon after, she began dancing with a professional company. What Voorheis-Mathews found in the aerial world was a different kind of culture from the performance and dance she grew up honing. Voorheis-Mathews also discovered a community and a spirit that fueled her creative goals.

“I feel like there’s a place for everybody in the circus, no matter what you look like, no matter what your shape is, no matter where your strengths are, everybody has a strength that they can bring to the table,” she said.

Voorheis-Mathews began her own company in 2018. The barn was critical. It gave her space to rehearse, train, and host small events.

“We all chipped in for our own costumes and brought our own apparatuses. It was very grassroots at the beginning,” she said. “And we sold out that first show. So, it was really exciting.”

When the Marshall Fire swept through their neighborhood, it took the barn with it. Voorheis-Mathews’ rig, silks, and custom trapeze burned too. Her friends and members of the aerial community donated replacements to Voorheis-Mathews within weeks of the fire.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE

Photo: Malachi Brooks/Unsplash

The Marshall Fire wasn’t just a tragedy for Voorheis-Mathews and her husband; it was a warning for Colorado and beyond. The Marshall Fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes in Boulder County in a matter of hours.  

But experts warn it wasn’t an isolated event. Since then, deadly fires have ripped through communities in Maui and Southern California. Like Marshall, these fires ignited in grasslands or shrublands and spread with terrifying speed.

For Dr. Katharine Nash Suding, a distinguished professor of grassland ecology at the University of Colorado Boulder, these events reflect a disturbing shift. Suding has written extensively about ecosystem dynamics and management, ecological restoration, biodiversity, and conservation.

“Most of the houses that got lost due to wildfire were lost in grasslands or shrublands,” Suding said. “It’s not as risky, the fires are more intense in a forest, but just the amount of houses and their proximity to grasslands throughout the whole West means that it’s almost about 80% of all buildings destroyed in the last several decades that were lost due to grassland fires,” Suding said.

Suding noted two main forces behind the growing danger. First is the expansion of housing into the wildland-urban interface. “The number of homes is increasing in what we call the wildland-urban interface, she said. “In Colorado, it’s increased by about 10% over the last couple of decades. So, we’re building more in riskier places.”

The second force, according to Suding, is the unique behavior of grassland fires. They often spread faster than forest fires and can catch people off guard.

“The situation, like in the Marshall Fire, they burn really quickly,” Suding said. “The winds were so strong that day that even if the fuels were managed and were reduced more than they were, it probably wouldn’t have stopped that fire. So, there are definitely some fires that are weather-driven, and that was a weather-driven fire for sure.”

To address the threat, Suding is leading a multi-year research effort across Boulder County to test ways to reduce grassland fire risk. “We have about 300 points across Boulder County where we’re monitoring fuels to have a better estimate of how the differences in fuels across different grassland types will affect fire,” she said.

Rather than lighting test fires, Suding’s team uses sophisticated computer modeling to simulate how fire would behave under different conditions. They’re testing a mix of strategies, including mowing, prescribed burns, and targeted grazing by goats and cattle.

“In forests, you probably see it sometimes that people managers will go through and reduce the amount of dead biomass in a forest once every 10–20 years, and it still will reduce risk,” Suding said. “In a grassland, all those approaches they really need to be done every 3 to 5 years.”

The frequency with which grasslands need to be maintained in grand corridors is complicated by the cost to local communities. Mowing is the go-to solution currently to reduce fuel and biomass and to limit a fire’s power. But over-mowing comes with tradeoffs.

“Maybe we mow so much that we kill all the grasses and then it’s just dirt,” Suding said. “And we’re losing all our topsoil. We might have these unintended consequences that we really don’t want.”

Suding also warns that climate change is making conditions worse.

“It’s definitely getting warmer in most of the seasons, but definitely in the summer and in the fall – and that warmth will dry out the plants earlier. Green vegetation doesn't burn well, but once the vegetation dies, it becomes very flammable because it's very dry.”

Unpredictable precipitation adds to the risk. The worst-case scenario is a really wet spring followed by a really dry summer and fall because that means that there’s a lot of plant growth perfectly positioned to burn. This was the scenario in 2020.

This type of research will be critical to protecting communities in Colorado and around the United States, as climate change brings greater threats, Ruding said. Her team’s work is supported by federal funding, support that Suding says is vital to not only preventing urban wildfires but also preventing billions in property damage.

“If that stops, we will be much less able to understand these issues that we actually haven’t pursued as scientists much in the past, like grassland fires,” she said. “It just really wasn’t on people’s radar screens. Now it is.”

REBUILDING

Voorheis-Mathews and her husband split much of the responsibility for managing the rebuild. But Mathews was generally the one who worked directly with the contractors. Mathews worked as a project manager, and he was uniquely gifted for the task, but even he wasn’t ready for the complex insurance and bureaucratic hurdles of rebuilding after a natural disaster.

From the start, the process was convoluted, inconsistent, and emotionally draining. Government support was minimal. Legal assistance was disorganized. Contractors were difficult to trust, and some flat-out stole money from fire victims. On top of everything, they were racing against the clock: their insurance coverage for temporary housing lasted only two years. If they didn’t finish rebuilding in time, they’d have nowhere to live. They would have to pay out of pocket for a hotel room or apartment, an expense they couldn’t muster with everything going toward the rebuild.

“We were trying to get it done before the insurance stopped paying for the apartment, but there were so many setbacks,” Mathews said.

The fear of being left without a home twice, once by fire, again by red tape, was a constant source of stress. They chose to oversee the entire construction process themselves while hiring a contractor to manage the actual building.

All of this was on top of Mathews’ demanding full-time job. He said it felt like juggling two jobs at once, and the stress took a toll on his health and marriage. But they overcame the relational challenges by each leaning into their strengths.

“I think the way that we divided and conquered worked well for our marriage. We each took on what we could take on, and tried not to dump that on the other person,” Mathews said.

Fleetwood Mathews and Fallon Voorheis-Mathews relax with their dog outside of their new home. Photo: Rudy Ortega

Compounding everything, they discovered they were significantly underinsured, despite having reviewed their coverage less than a year before the fire. They used the insurance payout meant for personal belongings to cover construction and overcome the financial shortfall. The choice meant they went without replacing much of what they lost inside the home.

“We could use our personal property insurance to bridge the gap, but it meant we would have to replace all of our stuff on our own. We thought we could make that work by buying back a little over time,” Mathews said.

Mathews also said it may take the rest of their lives to fully recover what was lost. According to Mathews, he was deeply frustrated with the government’s response, especially from FEMA, which he felt offered almost no meaningful support. FEMA gave the couple and other Marshall fire victims $11,000, he said, describing the total assistance they received after losing their home.

Other new regulations made the rebuild harder and more expensive. In 2018, Boulder County imposed new building requirements, like mandatory sprinkler and solar systems, that added tens of thousands of dollars in extra costs to already underinsured families. Mathews said that these rules added more than $50,000 to the construction at a time when rebuilding wasn’t guaranteed.

“It was just a nightmare dealing with the banks and dealing with the insurance company. And [Boulder County] added more cost and more headaches. I can’t believe you can’t provide more support to the victims,” he said. Further complicating matters, the new build was assessed with a much higher tax bill than the older home. According to Mathews, this increased their property taxes by about $2,000 per month — roughly $24,000 annually — which the couple wasn’t ready to take on after the catastrophe.

“We got a new house, but the question is, when you get through the process, can you still afford that new house?” Mathews said.

He also said that policy changes specific to fire and natural disaster victims could help ease the burden after a rebuild.

Mathews suggested a phased approach for natural disaster survivors when facing new building codes and property tax increases. This action would have made rebuilding their lives easier and less expensive at a time of crisis. Instead, they were left to navigate the financial and bureaucratic hurdles as well as insurance and construction struggles.

This month, a trial is scheduled to determine if Xcel Energy has a financial responsibility to survivors. Sparks from a disconnected power line may have caused part of the fire. The couple is part of the suit and hopes to get a settlement. But according to Mathews, at this point, they aren’t counting on anything. Instead, they have dedicated any settlement to rebuild the barn and rehearsal space. 

Even with the setbacks, Mathews said they’ve been lucky in ways that others haven’t. They had flexible work, no children to care for, and a contractor who became a trusted friend. They were able to make it work, not because the system helped, but because they had just enough personal resources and support to push through. He knows not everyone in the community had the same advantages, and that reality weighs on him. Looking back, he doesn’t downplay how hard it was, but he also doesn’t take for granted that they have nearly made it.

ANOTHER BLOW

In April 2023, just as they were settling into the new home, Voorheis-Mathews was diagnosed with breast cancer.

“I had a double mastectomy and 33 rounds of radiation,” she said. She’s still on hormone therapy and has another surgery scheduled just days after her upcoming show.

It was another blow in a long stretch of survival mode. “We just jumped to, ‘Let’s fix it,’ but no one tells you how.”

Her friend Ashley Eaves Sonnier, an aerialist and dancer who is performing in Voorheis-Mathews’ “Embers, Petals and Stars,” was one of many who helped her stay afloat.

“After everything she’s been through, she still shows up,” Sonnier said. “She still creates. It’s incredible.”

AERIAL AS HEALING

Fallon Voorheis-Mathews and Ashley Eaves Sonnierperform with silk in “Embers, Petals, and Stars” Photo: Rudy Ortega

“Embers, Petals, and Stars” tells the story of the fire and its aftermath. The first act, “Fire.Ashes.Rebirth,” traces the chaos of that day of the Marshall Fire and uses audio recordings, news broadcasts, voicemails, and spoken word of Voorheis-Mathews’ personal experience during and after the fire. Later scenes use dance and aerial performance to explore loss, grief, rebuilding, and the uneasy return home.

Voorheis-Mathews performs on a silk sent to her by a friend she met during the COVID pandemic. A silk is a piece of fabric that hangs from an anchor, and aerialists wrap it around their bodies to hang, spin, and move through the air.

“It’s red, orange, and yellow. I call it my fire silk.”

Before the show starts, Voorheis-Mathews will ask

the audience to join her in lighting candles. “We’ll have a moment of silence for the people who died, and for the first responders who risked their lives to save our homes.”

Voorheis-Mathews knows the show won’t fix anything. But it’s part of the healing process.

“I believe art heals,” she said. “It’s healed me through different things in my life. And I think it will heal others.”

Sonnier feels the same way. For her, aerial dance is both expression and therapy.

“The apparatus becomes a partner,” she said. “You can use it to show something soft or strong. You can touch it and say, ‘This was my house. I’m letting it go.’”

NO CLEAN ENDING

Voorheis-Mathews resists being called resilient.

“I guess I just don’t want to live in a dark room. I’ve seen what happens to people who do,” she said. “There’s still so much beauty in the world, and I don’t want to miss it.” She paused. “But there are days I am in the dark room. I feel my feelings. That’s what makes the rest of it beautiful, too.”

When the curtain rises, Voorheis-Mathews will climb into the air, not to escape the fire, but to face it, share the rebuilding, and move forward.

“You can’t have light without the dark.”