On Dec. 30, a small fire just northwest of Denver exploded into the most destructive conflagration in Colorado history. The Marshall Fire in Louisville and Superior, in neighboring Boulder County, forced more than 40,000 residents to evacuate. By the time the flames were quenched, it had destroyed more than 1,000 homes with a total value of more than $500 million. That is more people and homes than exist in my rural hometown of Idaho Springs.

An order to leave everything behind and escape the exploding firestorm jolted tens of thousands of Coloradans out of their normal lives as they made breakfast in their pajamas, packed lunches, bought groceries, played at the neighborhood park and ate pizza at the local Chuck E. Cheese.

The high winds blowing that day, combined with hazardous fuel levels across the region and a dry winter, turned what might have been a small grass fire into the most devastating fire that Colorado has experienced.

Sometimes we will get lucky and catch fires soon enough to avoid disaster. Sometimes the weather conditions are favorable enough. In early December, on a similarly windy day, we had a wildfire start outside of Idaho Springs. Our fire department’s quick actions were critical that day, but if it wasn’t also for a heavy dose of luck, the dry fuels and heavy winds could have easily driven that fire through hundreds of homes in Idaho Springs, or the thousands of homes in the eastern portion of Clear Creek County and the community of Evergreen.

I’ll never forget the terror that my community felt when the fire was close. The consequences endure in our community as children strategically place their stuffed animals for quick escape and parents carefully place shoes and jackets by the door. Our outcome was good: a community still standing, though traumatized.

As a County Commissioner in Clear Creek County, a mountainous rural area west of the Denver Metro region, and president of Colorado Communities for Climate Action, a coalition of counties and municipalities representing nearly one-quarter of the state’s population, I’m working every day to reduce climate pollution and the risk of disasters like these. Every time a disaster like the Marshall Fire occurs, I feel deeply for my colleagues – the city and town councilors and the county commissioners, whose constituents have lost homes, pets and, sometimes, family members. They not only must guide their community through the disaster itself, but then through the years of recovery that follow. And every time such a disaster occurs, I am also reminded forcefully of just how vulnerable my own community is.

Clear Creek County, where I was born and raised, our neighboring communities and all our coalition partners across Colorado are working hard to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and become more resilient to climate change’s impacts. And while the state of Colorado still has much more it needs to do, the state, too, has been taking important steps toward reducing climate pollution and improving climate resilience. But there is only so much we can do at the local and state level. Without bold federal leadership, disasters like the Marshall Fire will continue to happen across the United States more often and more destructively. Communities like ours around the country cannot be expected to bear the burden of natural disasters year after year when there are clear steps that Congress can take to make our lives safer.

The Marshall Fire wasn’t an anomaly. It was another scene in our unfolding real-time tragedy of a changing climate. It comes weeks after the deadliest December tornado outbreak in our nation’s history and precedes similar events in every corner of our country and globe. These events will continue to accelerate until something is done.

We have the tools and resources at our disposal to make our communities safer. We need to act now to dramatically expand renewable energy and reduce climate pollution, accelerate the electrification of our transportation system and support community resilience programs. The Build Back Better Act currently stuck in the U.S. Senate is a good example of legislation that we desperately need. Americans have always found a way to put partisan politics aside and come together to face these existential collective threats. It is long past time to do so on climate change.

No one should be forced to face the devastation that more than a thousand families in Superior and Louisville are facing today, and that millions continue to face all over the globe.

George Marlin is a Clear Creek County Commissioner and president of Colorado Communities for Climate Action.