My reef's experience in the Marshall Fire (Dec 30, 2021)

jasper9 · Jan 7, 2022

“Everyone has a plan before they get punched in the nose” -Mike Tyson

In the spirit of a retrospective taken from the tech industry, I wanted to share my recent experience so others might learn from it. It’s really hard for me to share this publicly but there are some learnings here that others should know about.

I live in Louisville, Colorado. On Dec 30 2021, during a major wind storm a grassland fire broke out and tore through the area from just south of Boulder to Superior and Louisville. Common with these weather patterns the next day brought a drop in temperatures and 8” of snow. My home was spared but only by a few blocks where there were destroyed houses, and probably about a block the other direction where there was a small burn patch.

Power was totally out for 46 hours.
Gas (for heating) went out early on, well before electric was lost and after it was back
Air temperature got down to 37 inside
Low of about 6f at the worst outside
Tank water got down to 50f when power was restored (according to Apex and Inkbird)
We were out of town for the holiday for 5 days planned via airplane.
The tank was cloudy and appeared 100% dead when we got back on Jan 2

What went well:

In the freshwater tanks, the endlers are dang fighters. I’m convinced after the nuclear wars, cockroaches and endlers will be what’s left. There are a ton of the tiny babies in one tank, a few adults in another. And I have a (already) mutant weird body shaped kilifish that is swimming around like nothing happened.
Apex and webcams were very handy while power was available before and after the outage. Afterwards I was able to stop my skimmer before I got home because I knew there was carnage and the more water it pulled out could lower salinity ever further. Also, just being able to see the levels of everything remotely gave piece of mind.
I use three raspberry pi’s powered on three different circuits that talk back to a cloud monitoring service (https://www.site24x7.com) which lets me know when any or all of them lose power. This was extremely handy as it lets me know within about 10 to 15 mins when there is a real problem and immediately when the power comes back. ~~I can write more about this if anyone is interested.~~ Here is how it is set up.
I have all kinds of IoT/smart devices: furnace/thermostat (old brand Radio Thermostat or some crap. Just get a Nest), whole house power meter (Emporia Energy), and whole house water meter (Flume) which are extremely useful for trending and finding a pattern or problem. It was useful to be able to see the state as the fire unfolded and when power came back. Afterwards to see if pipes had burst or was leaking etc.
Nest cameras are the best on the market in my opinion and I’ve tried many many different kinds. Pretty much set and forget with an app that just works. These were so valuable to see what was happening and when. Especially on one camera that happened to be pointed in one direction the fire got the closest.

What didn’t go well:

I had put off figuring out a good webcam location to watch the tank remotely. This would have been useful to see the state of the tank to inform decisions. By chance I did have a camera in my basement near the tank (for a different reason), so I could tell how cloudy the water was, but would have been better to have an actual full tank view.
The plan for short term emergency’s or circuit issues was insufficient to even come close to being useful in a major event. I knew this already so it wasn’t a surprise. I have a battery backup on one of two eco tech return pumps and one of two mp40’s. It quit after just two hours. Useful for what it’s intended for, just simply not enough capacity.
I also have a UPS that powers the apex and a few other low draw devices. That quit after a few hours too.
I had a generator that I test monthly and was all ready to go with extension cords organized and ready. I just never accounted for either (a) not being present for the event and (b) if I wasn’t there not being able to ask a friend or neighbor to set up and baby sit the generator because we all were dealing with the same event. Which leads me to the next part…

What I would do different

This is where I’ll get serious. I found the reefing hobby during the pandemic early on when stepping back from social functions, outings, get togethers etc. It started as more of a solo hobby to me. I’ve never been to a club meeting let alone a reef expo or any social event whatsoever. I had quite a bit of trouble getting my first batches of fish from local stores as it was at the height of the pandemic and it was weird to walk into a shop that was limiting customers to very small numbers at a time. All this to say I don’t have any reefing buddies here locally and that is probably my biggest oversight and misstep. I was called out on my first thread about this all for not pleading to the community for help. In hindsight that probably was my biggest mistake. But to be honest there’s a lot more to it like at the time we were having to prioritize the care of our critters. Dogs were luckily safe at a pet sitters in another town, but we had to figure out what to do with the wife’s snake and kids gecko when temperatures started to plummet without sign of power coming back. I don’t think I was wrong not to beg for help from strangers on Facebook or R2R but I do regret not already having a safety net in place. Yes a stranger could have been a hero to show up and bag my fish and keep them in a hospital tank. Yes my generator could saved or at least delayed death a bit. But asking strangers to do this when the cops and national guard were literally establishing checkpoints *and* not knowing exactly how safe it would even be in my neighborhood, just seemed a bit too much.
I would be remiss if i didn’t point out the other hesitation for not having the generator set up was we had no idea how long power was going to be out. If I had someone run the extension cables, get it all going and then leave. And then power came back but no one was available to switch it back to grid power would I be in a worse situation than if we left it and crosssed our fingers?

What’s heartbreaking:

I have been planning an off grid battery backup + solar setup wired into a manual transfer switch for a little while now. I’m not sure how many hours I could have gotten given the temperature dropping so far but the flow and oxygenation alone probably would have saved a ton. This will be in place prior to rebuilding. In fact I have already started ordering components.

I’m not sure what the ultimate takeaway from this is yet but understand that disasters can and will happen. Try to think of as many scenarios as you can but also have a fail safe if that is just having the one or two hero’s you know you can rely on and likewise be that hero for someone else whenever you can. Reefing aside, that’s just a good way to be.

Update 1:
After I wrote this all up I have found I do have some survivors! A shrimp, 3 urchins, a few snails, some zoas! Possibly I might have two acan’s that pull through too.