Hayman Burn Area

Getting to the Goose Creek Trailhead last Saturday required driving 15 miles through area burned by the Hayman Fire in 2002.  That's the same distance as from downtown Denver to the intersection of I-25 and C-470, all full of blackened tree trunks due to the carelessness and thoughtlessness of one person.

Yes, it made me angry.

According to Wikipedia it took 40 days to bring the fire under control, during which time it burned 133 homes and 138,114 acres.  That's an area equivalent in size to Richmond County, Virginia.

The Goose Creek Trail starts on the edge of the burn area, where bushes, aspens and wildflowers have made a comeback.

Eleven years.  And the area still looks eerily post-apocalyptic.

Six years in jail, probation and community service.  That's what causing this sort of devastation gets you.

I've heard people trying to put a positive spin on the recovery, talking about how the wildflowers wouldn't have been able to grow if the dense tree cover was still in place.  I've also heard the term "wasteland" applied to the region.  I'm going with the latter perspective.

The fire jumped a three-lane highway en route to causing $40 million in firefighting costs.  And resulted in six deaths -- a woman south of Florissant who had an asthma attack brought on by the smoke, and five firefighters from Oregon who got in an accident on their way to fight the blaze.

The owners of this house didn't rebuild.  Nothing but the concrete pad remains.  I can't imagine how hard it must have been to see your home and belongings just gone.

Not just nature is finding recovery time-consuming.  The utility company hasn't gotten around to removing or replacing whatever this is yet.

I don't know that I have a point with all this.  Posting all the images in black-and-white is a petty attempt to dramatize just how bleak the landscape still is.  The judicial process has run its course, and the hands of time can't be turned back to prevent this from happening.  Time can only address this moving forward, at a pace insufficient for my liking.

I guess I would just echo the words many of us heard from Smokey Bear when we were younger -- "Only you can prevent forest fires."  Please, when you're out enjoying our state's amazing natural beauty be careful with campfires, cigarettes .. and alleged letters from former spouses.