Debbie Fagan always wanted to live in the mountains. She grew up in Southern California and spent time in the Midwest, but after a trip up to Mt. Lemmon near Tucson, she knew she just had to live there. In 1979 Fagan’s mother Vickie helped her with the down payment for a small wooden cabin that would be used as her home and her small business of making wind chimes and selling other souvenirs.

She called her place The Living Rainbow and took out a 25-year mortgage. In January 2003, she paid the very last payment on her cabin.

Six months later, it burned to the ground.


Forced Evacuation


Beginning on June 17, 2003, a raging forest fire swept across Mt. Lemmon. The cause of the fire is unknown, but the fire burned for almost a month and consumed nearly 85,000 acres of land. Almost 350 homes and businesses were destroyed in the village of Summerhaven, including Debbie Fagan’s. Summerhaven has a year-round population of about 100, but because of the forest recreation, wintertime skiing and cool climate compared to the desert landscape 6,700 ft. below, it is a popular recreation spot for Tucsonans,

Throughout the summer of 2003, there had been several small fires throughout the village. Many residents of the mountain were told several times to evacuate when smaller flames broke out. But each time, it turned out to be nothing, and evacuations became something the residents often ignored.

“We didn’t really think it was going to be anything,” said Fagan, referring to the forced evacuation on June 19. She wasn’t originally planning to leave, but the Mt. Lemmon Fire District forced all business owners to leave in under 30 minutes.

“I tried to get my cats but they wouldn’t come.”Fagan said. “I took my money bag and a couple trays of beads. Then I left the mountain and went to my dad’s (in Tucson).”

Little did she know she wouldn’t be allowed back to her property for five weeks, while the largest wildfire in recent memory singed the wildlife of Mt. Lemmon, the village of Summerhaven and Ski Valley.

When Fagan returned, she found her wooden cabin still smoldering and two storage sheds full of her business supplies burned to the ground. She had more than 100,000 glass beads stored in those sheds — beads that were the main component of the wind chimes she made and sold at The Living Rainbow.

“I just remember screaming at my son, God bless him,” Fagan said. “I was just so devastated. My beads were everywhere.”



Picking Up the Pieces


After the fire cleared, Fagan got right to work salvaging what beads she could.

“My beads were imports from a maker in California and Texas, and they don’t make them anymore,” she said.

Some of the beads were burnt to a crisp. Most were just ashy and discolored. But many of the hundreds of thousands of beads stored in the sheds had molded together in the heat and fused into large clumps of colored glass.

For one year, Fagan did not rebuild. She spent 12 months at ground zero, picking up as many beads as she could, sifting through the charred building materials and burnt landscaping. Bucket-full after bucket-full, she sorted through the melted globs of plastic and picked out the salvageable from the destroyed. But she saved it all.

An ordinary businessman would have considered it a lost cause, wasted materials. But not Fagan, and not with a name like The Living Rainbow.

“In the fire, I not only lost my business and my home. I lost my source of income. I still had things I needed to pay for. But I had to keep going,” she said.

Even when Fagan had no roof over her head, she continued to make her handmade wind chimes with the remaining materials. A friend’s shed provided a temporary workspace. She continued to make a living, selling these wind chimes made from what she calls “Fire Beads” because of their warped shape or ashy and blackened discoloration from the smoke and heat. But most still retain their shape, color and luminosity.




Up From the Ashes

With the help of the Summerhaven community, Fagan worked to build back the old store, making the store more handicap accessible and adding additional room for storage.

“We weren’t allowed to use any (local) building materials because of the fire,” Fagan explained.

“All my rocks, trees — everything was crumbled. I was so sad,” she said.

Six years after the fire, The Living Rainbow is completely rebuilt in its original spot. Dennis Cozetti, owner of Cozetti Construction, proved to be a great ally in Fagan's ongoing struggle with the insurance company.

“Everyone on the mountain really loves Debbie,” Cozetti said.

Cozetti and his construction team took care to incorporate some of Fagan’s old store into the new one. Due to safety restrictions, builders aren’t allowed to use any of materials from the old structure. But Cozetti did find a way to use an old tree as a fake support in the new store, so that Fagan could have something familiar in her new building.

“She is very sensitive to the mountain and everyone knows how much she loved her place,” he said.

Throughout the rebuilding process, Fagan managed to stay afloat financially, partly because of the tremendous help she received from the Summerhaven community, but also because she continued to work and sell her wind chimes through it all.

“Now we are almost getting loved to death,” said Fagan, who received a lot of attention from visitors and tourists after the fire. “Things are getting paid off again and I am just trying to get everything to fit into the new place.”

Fagan is slowly selling the Fire Bead products, either as separate beads or wind chimes and blocks of melted beads. In addition, The Living Rainbow specializes in other handmade crafts that remind Summerhaven residents of the obstacles they overcame during the Aspen Fire of 2003. But Fagan finds parting with her beads difficult at times.

“I am still very attached to my beads, the little survivors of the fire,” she said.