 That day I was taking care of my dad. I rounded the corner to the kitchen to make dad lunch and as I stirred out in the kitchen window, suddenly I see flames coming up over Davidson Mesa. I had never seen anything like that. I kind of kicked into panic mode. I remember throwing dad in the car and I think it was only a matter of minutes before we ran for our lives. One thing that I wasn't prepared for is that the problems don't end once the fire burns out. When I got to the house, I saw the open fields all around were burned. The trees were scorched, yet my house was still there. It wasn't quite as lucky as it might sound. We were confronting massive problems after the fire and none of us were really thinking about the water. Mountains of ash and chemicals and materials were piled on top of our service lines and the contamination had seeped into 65-year-old pipes. The Southvale Water District is an unregulated water system under Colorado State law. We are basically a communal well that serves seven houses and so we found that we were basically on our own rebuilding our water system. I have no idea how Andy got our name and number but he got hold of me and it took Andy to realize exactly the problem that we had on our hands. So at about 11 o'clock, five days after the fire, I received a telephone call from the city of Louisville. They asked me to board a plane that night to help them identify the damage in their water system and repair it. I wanted to make an impact and disaster response and recovery is a means by which I can help people. So when wildfires enter communities, they can damage water systems like the pipes very beneath the street. That can cause these assets or infrastructure to become chemically unsafe. Until 2017, we could not find any public record that anybody had done any testing of water utilities in these water systems after wildfires. It's really critically important to understand what chemicals are present. You have to go in and test. We understand water safety and infrastructure. Generally populations impacted by these disasters don't. Our goal is to understand what are the health risks that this community needs to understand. What happens is these water systems become what's called depressurized. Water stops flowing out of these systems and now soot and ash and smoke get sucked into these water systems. Another reason why these systems become contaminated is because we have plastics. When plastics burn, they can release chemicals into the water supply. And when water systems are contaminated, they're often contaminated with these chemicals called VOCs, volatile organic compounds. VOCs like benzene are known to be carcinogenic, meaning that they can cause cancer. But these chemicals are also acutely toxic. And what that means is if they're at a high enough concentration, they can cause you to immediately become ill, which is why we're so adamant in trying to find them as fast as possible. We met John that day right outside his house and he explained to us what happened. He showed us the damage well. Their entire distribution network was plastic. So this water system had to rebuild. After a disaster like the fire, you flail around looking for resources. To have Andy come into our lives unrequested was an amazing experience because it not only showed us what the damage the fire did to our water system, but it provided a roadmap to get us out of that situation. When I responded to the Marshall Fire, that was the first time that it hit me that we were making a true impact. Last year, the United States Environmental Protection Agency drafted guidance on how all water systems in the country can test their water supplies after wildfires. And that work is a direct result of the work here at Purdue. Knowing that Andy and Purdue were focusing on something we weren't even thinking about, it's just remarkable. After a year and a half, we finally have a new water system. It's ready and available for the homes to be built. If it wasn't for Andy, we probably would have spent innumerable hours and costs trying to figure this out ourselves. His guidance and his experience was a blessing.