ATLANTA — It's been an unexpected start to 2022 for the Reid family. On December 30th, Joseph, Cindy, and their daughter Joanna saw on Twitter that they had to evacuate from their Louisville, Colorado home.
"We all grabbed our pets and basically passports and that was it," recalled 36-year-old Joanna.
Everything that was left behind was lost.
"It's truly a disaster area," said Joseph. "There were 991 homes completely destroyed and 100 that were damaged beyond use. So the place is going to take several weeks even for the homeowners to be able to get onto their property if anything can be recovered. Ours is literally ash and rubble."
The Reids lived in Atlanta for over three decades. Joanna was born there, Joseph was an Emory University professor and later worked for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while Cindy moved to the city right after graduating college.
They moved to Colorado two years ago to find a dryer and cooler climate to help Joanna's more than ten medical conditions.
"I moved and [my parents] are really involved in helping to take care of me. They followed us out here. I've had over 100 surgeries in the last 20 years and there’s been years I spent 33 weeks inpatient in the hospital," Joanna said.
Joanna says doctors told her family multiple times that she'd likely not make it past age 20. She's 36 and still "going strong."
She credits her parents and that strength for pushing through all this time. That's part of the reason why living close to her parents is so important.
"Honestly, it sounds a little dramatic, but I really still need my mom and dad," she recognized.
Just five days after Christmas in 2021, Joanna was in the hospital getting an infusion when crews started calling for evacuations.
"Some of my nurses that I have there, apparently they got flames within four feet of the oxygen tanks in the ER and the staff were using water to spray it down to keep the flames from taking the oxygen because the entire hospital would have blown up," she said.
The whole hospital evacuated. Her parents and pets evacuated, too. Joseph had a feeling they'd return to nothing... Cindy not so much.
"I was either in denial, or just I don't know, but I thought we were going away for a couple days because of the smoke. And when the smoke clears, we'd be coming back," Cindy said.
The wildfires in Colorado have destroyed almost 1,000 homes and buildings.
"Everyone has crises in their lives and health crises but just imagine having the 1000 people that live around you in crisis all at the same time," Joseph said.
Investigators are still trying to figure out what sparked it.
"I never in a million years thought that I would lose my home, and all my belongings and everything that I've collected," Cindy added. "I don't have any things anymore to pass down to my kids that are memories of our family of all the generations."
Now, both the Colorado and Georgia community is rallying to help the Reid family. They have set up a fundraiser, which in four days has raised more than $60,000.
The money will help Joseph and Cindy rebuild and start again in Louisville, to stay close to Joanna and care for her.
"I'm really scared that they won't be able to afford to live here," Joanna said. "I’ve been sick since I was a kid, so it's a big comfort to me to know they're just five minutes away if I'm not with them. I'm really terrified, honestly, that they won't be able to afford to rebuild here. So it's really hard."
After returning to the plot of land where their home once stood, the Reids found out they're dealing with yet another financial hurdle.
"Unfortunately, we discovered after the fact that our homeowners insurance policy had a defect that I didn't detect, because as I was trying to buy the house that we lived in, Joanna was in the hospital. It was very difficult to handle all the different paperwork," recalled Joseph.
To donate to the family, click here.