Beulah resident Kathryn Luzardo loses home to fire amid 254-home toll

Aspen —The Aspen Acres fire didn’t just burn structures; it erased decades of accumulated life in Beulah. The Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office confirmed at least 254 homes were demolished, mostly in the Beulah area, turning neighborhoods that once overlooked the Wet Mountains into an ashen cemetery of mangled metal and charred furniture.

To hear Kathryn Luzardo tell it, the physical loss is manageable. The human one is not.

“Everybody waves,” Luzardo told The Colorado Sun in a phone interview. “They know when you’re sick. They know if someone’s not good for the community. I think we all band together and, dislikes or likes, we all make up a beautiful valley that’s just so welcoming and together. We’ve experienced flood, drought, plague, everything. Fire. And Beulah’s a beautiful place to be.”

Luzardo, 68, and her husband, Guy Schepmoes, learned on June 29 that the fire was bearing down while they were en route home from Seattle, fresh off an Alaskan cruise. A neighbor called to deliver the news and confirm she had rescued their Maine Coon mix, Steve, before flames leveled the neighborhood.

“It burned it flat,” Luzardo said. “I don’t think you could even go up there with a fork and get out any pieces of anything that is left.”

The math holds up for what remains. A file cabinet storing hundreds of patterns for Luzardo’s sewing and quilting projects is the only possession still standing, according to photos from an insurance adjuster. Everything else — family photos, travel souvenirs, cooking competition ribbons, purses, threads, and a fabric collection estimated at $20,000 — has been reduced to ash. More critically, Luzardo lost her diabetes supplies and a refrigerator holding lamp chops for a special occasion.

She never had the chance to pack up hand-crafted quilts or scraps of fabric saved in her lime-green, she-shed-turned sewing studio next door. Nor did Schepmoes grab tools he had used to build the front porch where the couple took refuge many evenings. There, watching turkey vultures roost and bats emerge, they listened to nearby eagles. Now, left with two suitcases, earrings, perfume, documents, and Steve, they face a future defined by what was left behind.

The question is whether the community’s social fabric can support the logistical weight of rebuilding. Luzardo and Schepmoes represent a larger cohort of survivors navigating their first steps forward into uncertainty. They are not alone in Beulah, where the deep roots of long-term residents remain even as the physical markers of those roots turn to rubble.

The cost of staying put

For locals, the 254-home tally isn’t just a statistic from the Sheriff’s Office; it’s a measure of displacement. The fire struck quickly, leaving little time for the kind of careful curation Luzardo practiced over 30 years. The loss of medical supplies alongside personal effects suggests that for some, the immediate future involves more than just insurance claims, it involves managing chronic health conditions without their usual infrastructure.

Luzardo’s assessment of Beulah as “welcoming and together” offers a counterpoint to the devastation. It suggests that while the homes are gone, the network of neighbors who wave, check in on the sick, and share community burdens remains intact. That social capital may be as valuable as the rebuilt structures themselves.

As Beulah begins to clear the ash, the focus shifts from survival to reconstruction. Luzardo’s file cabinet stands as a symbol of that transition: small, specific, and enduring amidst the broad destruction.

“We’ve experienced flood, drought, plague, everything,” Luzardo said. “Fire. And Beulah’s a beautiful place to be.”