Crews ready to replant fire areas

DENVER -- Fire crews are eager to begin replanting a carpet of green shrubs and grasses where a 138,000-acre fire seared the wooded slopes southwest of Denver and where rain now threatens to wipe out roadways and homes.

The plan, submitted to the U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C., Friday, needs federal approval since it exceeds the $300,000 spending limit under which federal Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation teams work. "We're moving really fast," Forest Service spokesman Randy Wilkerson said. "With this fire occurring right in front of the monsoon season, there's potential threats coming up soon."

On hillsides where intense fires stripped the soil bare of living organisms, heavy rain rolls right off the ground as if it were asphalt. City water department crews plan to begin work Monday installing bales of straw to act as dams and prevent rapid runoff.

About 125 miles northwest of the Hayman fire area, near Glenwood Springs, firefighters have been taking similar measures to prevent flooding where wildfires burned more than 12,200 acres. Near Durango, wet weather helped crews gain ground on a fire that burned 73,145 acres.

The Hayman fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado history, was fully contained Tuesday after destroying 133 homes and a business. A Forest Service worker was charged with starting it on June 8. She has pleaded innocent to the charges. Even as hotspots still smoldered, a 25-member team of scientists and hydrologists gathered over the past three weeks to walk through the ash-covered forest and, aided by satellite imagery, to assess and plot areas of high and moderate burn.

Treatments planned

The maps have been used to devise treatments aimed at preventing flooding and erosion that could damage roadways, property and the watershed that serves a majority of Denver's 1.1 million water users.

"Most of these treatments are designed to be in place before the first major damage-producing storm," Wilkerson said. "There's a lot of land to treat and a short amount of time to do it."

On Thursday and Friday, flood warnings forced firefighters off the lines. Rain washed fire debris onto a highway and wiped out some access roads near Cheesman Reservoir -- a key to Denver's water supply.

"Soot and ash is coming down and lying on the bottom of the drainage. Several of the roads are impassible now," said Chuck Dennis, a Colorado forest employee. "We need to get in there before we really have the monsoon season set in and get heavy rains over the entire site."

Rehabilitation aims to stop the water and promote regrowth. Crews will spread straw beds and lay trees perpendicular to the steep slopes. Aircraft will drop seeds for new plants.

Yellowstone National Park biologist Roy Renkin says the plan is more intense than one drafted for Yellowstone, where thousands of acres burned in 1988. In the Hayman area, the forest is pockmarked with homes and roadways and the burn could impact Denver's watershed.

"It depends on your objectives," Renkin said. "At Yellowstone they took a more passive approach, recognizing that the risks or values to be saved or protected were much different."