For a few moments, Doug Armitage and Barbara Hardt felt relief.
On Feb. 6, they were the first Nederland residents to pass through the fence guarding the Caribou Village shopping center, reduced to several piles of twisted debris in the parking lot and a blackened husk holding the remains of the businesses that once filled it.
They were accompanied by the Boulder County sheriff, a mental health professional and a representative from Tebo Properties, which owns the building that caught fire in the predawn hours of an otherwise uneventful morning in early October.
And after they’d gotten to peer inside the shell of their business, Brightwood Music — but not go in, because that was too dangerous — Hardt, who is editor-in-chief of Nederland’s Mountain-Ear newspaper, wrote on Facebook:
“Today, the healing can begin… we stood.. and we breathed deep breaths. And we walked out hand in hand. And the cracks in our hearts can start to mend.”
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