On Jan. 2, Denverites were glued to their devices to see images of the worst fire the city has seen in 30 years. The five-alarm fire destroyed the construction site of the Harker Heights apartment complex at 5337 Leetsdale and created smoke and heat damage for those in the adjacent South Hilltop neighborhood.
The terror there was considerable.
Shira and Marty Zimmerman were quickly checking their mobile communications, too, but their interest in the fire was a bit more intense than most. Their home on South Dakota Ave. was literally across the street from the flames.
“It was totally surreal,” says Shira.
“It was like, is this really happening?”
The Zimmermans have lived in their home for two years, after moving from Lowry, where they lived for 10 years. The day before the fire, they returned from an out-of-town trip.
“Marty’s folks asked us if we wanted to come for Shabbat dinner,” Shira says. “We were like, ‘no, no, we’re exhausted.’
“So we just did Shabbat ourselves, the two of us. We had just finished dinner and heard a huge boom. We looked outside and we knew we had to get out quickly.”
By the time Shira and Marty quickly secured some valuables before finding refuge at Marty’s mother’s home in Winston Downs, their neighborhood in South Hilltop was engulfed in smoke.
“We heard that boom,” says Marty, “which might have been a structure falling or who knows what. We hear sirens occasionally on Leetsdale and Alameda, but this time there were a lot more of them.
“We had created emergency plans, if something were to happen,” Marty says. “But we never, never had to enact it. This was just completely out of left field.”
“The ash was so thick. You had embers that were falling all over Leetsdale, and you couldn’t really see that well because there was already a huge plume of smoke.”
Amidst the evacuations from the neighborhood, which Marty estimates was about six blocks worth of residents, there was one more important item to secure.
“This is one of the funnier things,” Shira says. “Marty grabbed the fireproof safe, just in case it’s not really fireproof.”
As they left their home, certain thoughts crossed the couple’s minds: “We were already thinking about that,” Shira says, “if we can’t go back, what are we going to do?”
The next day, while the fire was still smoldering, Shira and Marty were able to return to their home, before attending services at Rodef Shalom.
“We could still see the fire trucks,” Marty says. “We could still see them fighting the fire from here. Nobody else had returned who had left.
“As we left for services, there was still ash and embers falling on the cars, because the winds were shifting again from the southeast to the northwest.
“We made it to shul, though.”
On the day the IJN visited with the couple, South Forest Street, one of the streets accessing S. Dakota Ave., had just opened up to thru traffic for the first time since the fire. Nearly two weeks after the fire, houses across from the Zimmermans were being treated by remediation companies for the smoke and heat damage.
The Zimmermans’ house, somehow, had been spared. Shira and Marty, closing in on 25 years together, consider themselves tremendously lucky.
“Yes, I think so,” says Shira.
She glances at her husband and says, “Yeah, I think so. We found each other.”
“Yes, I do feel that we are a lucky couple,” adds Marty.
“I also feel we do a lot of good things for the community and we do a lot of helping out. Sometimes good things come back to those who do good things for others.”
At this moment, the couple stands on their patio overlooking South Dakota Ave.
“Almost every house across the street had some sort of mitigation company come in to deal with smoke or some sort of heat damage or water damage,” says Marty.
“The houses on our side of the street did not have that.
“We were very fortunate because we didn’t have any open windows or any open doors at that time, so the only way smoke could get in was if we opened the door or a little bit or if smoke went in through the garage and then went into the house.”
Across the street, backyards that faced the Harker Heights development were scorched.
“When you pass by, it looks like a war zone would look like,” says Shira. “I mean, it looks like somebody just bombed it, right?”
It does. Shira and Marty Zimmerman were two of the lucky ones.
© IJN 2026