"U.S. disaster declarations totaled 108 last year, touching 137 million people. “Climate change is here, it’s impacting people, and it’s going to get more severe,” says one activist."

"The flames took Erica Solove by surprise.

It was the middle of winter in Colorado. Blizzards were to be expected. A fire? Not so much.

Yet on Dec. 30, 2021, the Marshall Fire tore through the towns of Louisville and Superior in Boulder County, killing two people and destroying more than a thousand homes.

Solove’s was among them. She had fled with her husband, their two young children and their yellow lab, taking nothing but the clothes they were wearing. Wallets, passports and birth certificates were incinerated with the rest of the house. Her husband was the only one wearing shoes.

It snowed the next day. The family jumped between hotels before finding a rental in South Boulder, where they stayed until moving into their rebuilt home in the summer of 2023. The year-and-a-half construction project beat many estimates of how long rebuilding could take."

Gabe Castro-Root reports for Inside Climate News May 3, 2025. [2]