Windows on the south side of Colfax Community Network’s new Family Preservation Center are pictured shortly after the heat from a fire at a nearby home caused them to break on Friday, April 5, 2024. (Courtesy of Anna Miller) 
Charred structures are pictured beside a home next to the Family Preservation Center on Montview Boulevard in Aurora in the aftermath of a house fire Friday, April 5, 2024. (Courtesy of Anna Miller) 
The aftermath of an April 5, 2024 residential fire that gutted a garage structure and damaged a connected home in the 1900 block of Galena Street is pictured. Colfax Community Network’s Family Preservation Center is visible at left, behind the burned structure. (Courtesy of Jordan Wakefield) 
First responders are pictured near a fire that started in a residential structure on Galena Street, next-door to Colfax Community Network’s Family Preservation Center, on April 5, 2024. Homeowner Jordan Wakefield later guessed that the fire could have been started by a faulty electrical outlet or appliance. (Courtesy of Jordan Wakefield) 
A garage structure burns next to Colfax Community Network’s new Family Preservation Center early on the morning of April 5, 2024. The blaze forced out the owner of the connected home, while heat and smoke damaged the center, at right. (Courtesy of Jordan Wakefield)
AURORA | Just a few days after staffers settled in at Colfax Community Network’s new center for poor and homeless youth, a fire next door gushed smoke into the building, forcing them out again.
The new facility opened after years of planning by Mile High Behavioral Healthcare, which oversees Colfax Community Network. Despite the obstacle of Friday’s fire, the program says it hopes to scrub soot and complete the environmental testing required for the center to open safely and on schedule this month.
“I think it has been really helpful that we had just wrapped up the project and that everyone’s heart is still in it,” said Anna Miller, director of business development and public relations for Mile High Behavioral Healthcare, which oversees Colfax Community Network.
‘They are doing a full, thorough cleaning of our building and testing it for hazards. Since we serve kids, we’re being very, very careful.”
Aurora firefighters responded to a fire in the 1900 block of Galena Street in the early morning hours of April 5, finding structures in the back of a home next to the center engulfed in flames, according to a news release from Aurora Fire Rescue.
While the agency said the cause of the fire is still under investigation, homeowner Jordan Wakefield later said she believed the blaze could have been sparked by a faulty electrical outlet or appliance.
Since the fire originated in a garage structure that is physically separate from her house, Wakefield said it did not set off her home’s smoke detectors at first. Instead, she said she was alerted when a neighbor spotted it and began pounding on her door.
“He’s the whole reason that we woke up,” she said. “Our car caught on fire too. They put it out before it exploded, but it was a bad situation that could have gotten much worse than it already was.”
Miller, Wakefield and Rod Weber of Aurora Fire Rescue said that, as first responders worked the fire, they climbed onto the roof of the Family Preservation Center, cutting a hole into the building from above and breaking open gates and doors to ensure the inside of the 10,000-square-foot facility wasn’t also smoldering.
The fire was extinguished without inflicting any injuries, but the center’s recently installed roof — which Miller said was worth about $130,000 and was donated by the Colorado Roofing Association — was damaged. Miller said the heat of the fire also broke windows on the center’s south side, and soot was deposited throughout the interior of the building.
Miller said Mile High plans to file an insurance claim for the structural damage to the building, including the roof and doors.
The center’s two halves have been designed to serve youth living in poverty along the East Colfax corridor, including children up to age 12 on one side and teens and young adults on the other.
Miller said the center’s younger clientele, who had already started attending after-school programs at the facility, have been temporarily relocated to the nearby Moorhead Recreation Center. Staff members hired to work with teenagers and young adults were either relocated to Mile High’s office in Denver or allowed to work from home.
But as long as testing of the inside of the facility doesn’t reveal toxic residues or other hazards that would take time to mitigate, Miller said the center hopes to invite grade schoolers back this week, followed by teens and young adults later this month, as the program had originally envisioned.
“At least no one was hurt, which was the important thing,” Miller said.
Wakefield said she is unable to stay in her home for now and that the blaze also melted the vinyl siding of a neighbor’s home.
The fire came just a few weeks after another fire damaged Aurora First Presbyterian Church, where Colfax Community Network operated before moving into its new home at 10190 E. Montview Blvd.
Aurora Fire Rescue spokeswoman Dawn Small said that, while both fires are under investigation, no connection is suspected to exist between the two.
Two separate fires at different locations, both adjacent to Colfax Community Network in just two weeks? Not a coincidence. Most likely a “client” or a disgruntled neighbor started the fires….or someone interested in insurance money.