(Note: This is an incredible series -- very thoughtfully done, from the audio to the photo series, by both reporters and residents. It is well worth your time, whether you live in Colorado or just cherish property rights, and want to see what mis/nonmanagement of an entire region of the country can result in.)

January 4, 2003

By Gabrielle Crist

Rocky Mountain News

100 Gene Amole Way

Denver, Colorado 80204

303-892-5000

Fax: 303-892-2568

http://www.rockymountainnews.com

To submit a Letter to the Editor: letters@RockyMountainNews.com

From the ashes: On a Sunday in June, ashes fell like snowflakes and smoke choked the skies above Denver. By the time the Hayman Fire was contained, it stripped mountain residents of their homes, heirlooms and a sense of place. It also drove home for Front Range residents how serious the state's drought had gotten.

Today we launch on assignment, a periodic chronicle of our coverage of major news stories. Today's package records how the Rocky Mountain News covered Colorado's most devastating fire.

We also offer more photos from this summer's coverage of the Hayman. Use our map to see how the fire grew, or watch NEWS4 video from the fire's front lines.

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Loss of trees scars land, hurts hearts

Protections improve odds

'Miracle' survival stories abound; expert says science explains most

Losses haven't lit a fire under insurance firms

Task force still in search of victims needing financial aid

Carrs battered, but upbeat

Smallest victims of Hayman Fire

A wedding dress. An antique stove that had been in the family for years. A visitors journal that so many friends had signed.

For the people whose property was ravaged by the Hayman Fire last summer, it's not only the houses that are missed. It's the photographs of childhood, the quilt bought years ago on a special trip, the recipes from a grandmother who died long ago.

Whenever residents talk about the things they lost, they are careful to note that they were just "things." Thankfully, the flames did not engulf people. But then they return to their list of lost items, and often they cry.

When Colorado's largest wildfire raged through Pike National Forest, it stole more than a long list of possessions -- it robbed residents of a piece of their identity.

Whether it is the painting above the fireplace, a La-Z-Boy chair or a set of dishes, belongings define people, and many victims of the Hayman Fire are now trying to figure out how to rebuild a lifetime of memories -- bit by bit.

"It leaves a very strange feeling," said Branwyn Zephyr, who lost her West Creek home of seven years. "I didn't know what I liked anymore."

The communities destroyed by the fire are places where the super wealthy live next to the super poor, where full-time residents and "snow birds" share the pride of mountain living, where many greet outsiders, especially the media, warily.

The residents have different lifestyles, but all are trying to find a way to re-create their lives as they remembered them to be.

Jenifer Farres lost the family cabin her parents once owned at Lutheran Valley Retreat, and she's worried that without it, the memories of her mother and father will slip away.

Robert Kraas lost the vacation home on property where the ashes of his wife and son are scattered.

Mary Ann Cochran had to move to Missouri to live with her daughter because she had nowhere to go after the mobile home she rented burned to the ground. Her 26-year-old cat, Morris, was trapped inside.

Like so many others, Cochran just wants to get back to life as it was.

But that life no longer exists, and if residents ever doubt that, all they have to do is return to the property they loved. That's where the images of charred black tree trunks slap them in the face.

Life as they'd known it is gone for good, and most residents are still mourning its passing, moving through the stages of grief.

Denial

When news of the impending evacuations for the Hayman Fire spread through the various mountain communities, some residents hardly hurried to collect their belongings. They had just been through a scare with the Schoonover Fire and returned home to find everything unharmed.

The Hayman blaze would be no different, they assumed.

About two weeks after the Hayman evacuations began, sheriff's deputies allowed Jannie Kinney and a few of her neighbors to return to their West Creek homes for a couple of hours.

Officials told Kinney the fire was 75 percent contained, so Kinney thought that meant the blaze was under control.

"The sky was blue, not even a smell of smoke (in the air)," Kinney recalled. "Nah, this isn't gonna get us," she thought to herself.

So she and her neighbors didn't grab their precious belongings. They didn't make any last-ditch attempts to protect their homes.

One neighbor took a long bath, Kinney said. Another changed the cat litter, and one watered her plants.

"That's the night our homes were lost," Kinney said.

Some local firefighters said they never thought the Hayman Fire would swallow their community.

"Oh, yeah, we'll have this taken care of in a few days, just like always," Jim Bruner, who was with the Mountain Communities Volunteer Fire Department, recalled thinking.

In the end, 132 homes and nearly 138,000 acres burned.

Even after dozens of homes were reduced to ashes, many residents had a hard time accepting the loss.

Ricki Pezoldt and her husband closely followed news of the fire, hoping their vacation home would be spared. When the fire spread, Pezoldt's brother-in-law toured the area and gave them the bad news: their cabin was torched.

Pezoldt didn't believe him. Maybe he went to the wrong valley, she rationalized.

"Never mind that he knew exactly where it was," Pezoldt said. "No, he was somehow deluded."

Anger

The fire was still smoldering when the fingers started pointing.

Terry Barton, the Forest Service worker who has pleaded guilty to starting the fire and faces six years in a federal prison, was an obvious target.

"I am very, very bitter," said Mary Ann Cochran, the woman whose cat died in the fire. She said she'd love to spend a little time with Barton, who at first denied setting the fire, then said she accidentally started it while burning a letter from her estranged husband at a forest campsite.

"I'd probably wring her neck, and I'm sure I'm not the only one," Cochran said. "She'd certainly know my feelings, that's for sure."

Although many residents are still angry with Barton, these days, more of their hostility seems focused on the Forest Service.

Some say federal officials could have minimized the damage if they had fought the fire more aggressively in the early days. Others say federal officials should have accepted two bulldozers offered by a local company. And some say they were forced to evacuate too early, losing time they needed to gather belongings.

The most common complaint, however, is that the Forest Service didn't cooperate with local volunteer firefighters who had expertise and knew the terrain.

But the rift between residents and federal officials isn't just about a burned house or unused bulldozer. It's about a difference in approach, a difference in investment.

Many of the local firefighters have lived in the mountains for years and have grown up with a pioneer spirit of sorts, firmly believing they should do anything to protect their homes and help their neighbors. That approach was not well regarded by federal officials, who follow rules and regulations and acknowledge that they won't knowingly risk a firefighter's life to save a structure.

Howard Feldenkreis, a volunteer firefighter from West Creek, said he understands the pioneer approach. He never left his home during the fire, even when flames were licking at his back door.

He said federal officials swooped in and didn't really try to befriend local firefighters, didn't try to involve them.

"The feds did kind of throw their chest out," Feldenkreis said.

That offended some of the volunteer firefighters. The homes threatened were their own, and they were too emotionally invested not to join the battle, Feldenkreis said.

And for the residents who lost their homes -- or their trees -- the federal government is the faceless entity to blame.

"There are some folks who are very, very bitter and very, very angry," said Scott Reeder, fire chief of the Mountain Communities Volunteer Fire Department. "They want to know why their homes burned."

Reeder said he understands that residents need someone to blame for their loss, but some of the criticisms leveled at the Forest Service are unwarranted.

"Were there bad decisions? Of course," Reeder said. With a fire of that magnitude, it's easy to critique the process afterward, he said.

Homes didn't burn because federal officials were inept; they burned because the Hayman Fire was a 200-foot wall of flames racing through the forest, he said. It jumped highways, rivers, meadows and fire lines. A handful of volunteers wouldn't have made a difference, Reeder said.

Reeder said he's angry that residents continue to gripe about something that can't be changed.

"At some point, you have to move on. Those trees are burned. Those houses are gone. We learned a lot of valuable lessons," Reeder said. "You can't live with this anger for the rest of your life."

Bargaining

Homeowners' insurance claims. The Federal Emergency Management Agency. The U.S. Small Business Administration.

For many, it has just been too much.

Mark Knight was caretaker of the Wildhorn Ranch and ran his own aerial mapping business. When he was evacuated, he lost thousands of dollars worth of business because he couldn't get to his home to work on his reports. His clients were forced to contract with other businesses.

Officials at FEMA told him they couldn't help because he wasn't a homeowner. They referred him to the Small Business Administration.

SBA officials turned him down for a $7,000 low-interest loan to offset his lost salary because he had filed for bankruptcy five years earlier, Knight said.

Knight said he thought the government was supposed to help the fire victims.

"I'm not looking for handouts," Knight said, but he said he needs to recoup the income he lost over the summer or he can't support his four children. He recently applied for help from the Forest Fire Victims Task Force in Woodland Park, and received $2,000.

He's not alone in his frustration.

Laurie Glauth is the trustee for two parcels of land about 10 miles north of Woodland Park. Two elderly friends she has known since childhood deeded her the property, in part because they knew she wouldn't sell or develop it.

The first parcel is an 800-acre working ranch with 20 buildings and 100 head of cattle. The other is a 2-acre lot with a cabin.

The cabin burned, and although the ranch buildings survived, the fire has pushed Glauth to the financial brink.

The ranch pastures could still be used for grazing, Glauth said, but the land backs up to Forest Service property, and the fire took the federal fence line. Forest Service officials haven't replaced it yet.

The cattle, unable to graze, must be fed, and even though they were insured, she got no insurance money because they survived the fire.

FEMA won't help because she didn't lose her primary residence, and the SBA can't offer assistance for agriculturally zoned areas, Glauth said. She's reluctant to add to her climbing debt with a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"You're kind of screwed, quite frankly," Glauth said. "I'm going to have to cut the herd down -- a good chunk of them, actually."

Applying for government assistance might seem overwhelming, but the process is pretty simple, said Martin McNeese, the FEMA disaster recovery specialist in charge of helping victims of the Hayman Fire.

FEMA provides temporary housing assistance, but only to those who lost their primary homes and did not have insurance, McNeese said. Most of the Hayman Fire victims lost vacation or retirement homes, he said.

FEMA caseworkers did their best to refer residents to the proper agencies for other types of aid, he said.

It's not uncommon for disaster victims to become frustrated with filling out paperwork and making numerous phone calls after losing everything they own, said Jim Chestnutt, FEMA's public information officer in Denver.

"Folks are not going to be in the greatest of moods for dealing with this," Chestnutt said.

Depression

In the weeks after the fire, many victims said they had difficulty sleeping and some became physically ill. All described being in shock when they first saw the remnants of their homes, the remnants of the trees that once surrounded their chunk of paradise.

"It's like someone took a part of our life and just ripped it away," said Elliott Asp, who lost his weekend cabin in Turkey Rock. "This is a huge loss to us."

At first, many couldn't remember all they had lost. It wasn't until they looked for a certain sweater, or picture, or cookbook that they realized they had one more item to add to their list of things destroyed in the blaze.

Since the initial mourning, however, residents said they really haven't had time to process their loss. They have spent the past several months haggling with insurance companies, or trying to turn a rental house into home, or getting their children's lives back to normal.

Glauth said she gets nauseous thinking about the 100 years of local history and heirlooms lost when her cabin burned. "I don't go there very often in my mind or in my heart," Glauth said. "I've got too much business to tend to."

Many residents said they won't heal until they can get out of their rental homes and back onto their land.

Gayle and Tami Settles lost the Trout Creek home they had lived in with their three teenage daughters for the past five years. For now, they live in a rental home in Divide as they slowly try to replace all they lost.

It might seem exciting to get all new things, Gayle Settles said, but "it's a pain in the neck."

Their new belongings feel sterile compared to their old stuff. "There's no memories associated with it," Settles said.

As long as the family isn't in their own home, Settles said, they won't be able to move forward.

"We're in limbo. We just want to be in our house back on our property," Gayle Settles said.

Acceptance

As long as residents look out their front windows and see charred black sticks, they will be saddened by the summer that robbed them of their belongings, their memories and their forest.

But little by little, residents are trying to look ahead.

Perhaps the most noticeable sign is the amount of new construction in the area.

Numerous residents have decided to rebuild, and many are eager to get back on their land, even if it is charred.

John and Alison Lytle lost the Turkey Rock home they had just finished building two years ago, but they are trying to regroup.

"The hurt's gone. The confusion's gone. The grieving is over with," John Lytle said.

They've already started building a new home, which Lytle said "is kind of healing in itself," and are looking forward to watching the forest rebound.

Like the Lytles, many residents are working through their grief by focusing on the positives.

Pamela Wilson's positive is the charred, shrunken wedding rings sitting above the bathroom sink in her Oklahoma home.

She and her husband, Tony, spent four years of Thanksgivings and spring breaks building their mountain cabin in Turkey Rock. They hauled in all of the material themselves because the road to their 900-square-foot home was too rugged for commercial trucks.

They had only some painting left to do when the fire turned their project into a pile of ash. Buried in the rubble were Pamela's wedding rings.

One ring was a simple gold band Tony bought her when they married in 1985. The other was from Tony's grandmother, a family heirloom meant to remain in the family for decades to come.

She had forgotten them during her last visit to the cabin. She had to get them back.

"You go down there and find those rings," she told her husband.

In July, Tony Wilson returned to the property.

"It was going to be serious business with my mother if that ended up lost," he said.

The first day he was there, he sifted through the ashes for hours. He gave up and spent the rest of the day climbing.

The next day, with little else to do, he decided to look a little more.

He found the rings. They were charred, and had shrunk, but he found them.

Pamela Wilson said the rings no longer fit her and are hardly recognizable, but she hasn't rushed to have them cleaned and repaired. Instead, she shows them to friends and family as her victory over the fire.

"It's such a fun story," she said.

To others, the good that came out of the fire had little to do with possessions -- it was seeing the growth of a community.

In these mountain towns, many residents were isolated, hadn't even met some of their neighbors. The fire brought them together and, to some degree, the bond exists still.

When Lynne Ronk lost her home and everything in it, a friend organized a post-wedding shower, so Ronk could register for gifts and recoup some of the essentials.

When Gary Bieske lost dozens of acres to the fire, friends from all over showed up to help him clean up, drop seed and lay hay to protect against flooding.

"Boy, that really lifted my spirits," Bieske said. "I felt like such an unlucky person until all those people came out."

For many, religious faith and spiritual beliefs have helped ease the pain. Some say they must accept what's happened because it is God's will, while others talk about the importance of forgiveness and compassion.

Branwyn Zephyr, who lost her West Creek home, said she has had moments of doubt about living in the charred forest, but she always ends up convinced that the mountains are where she belongs.

These days, Zephyr accepts the fire, accepts the loss, accepts that her life is different now.

"It was just time for the forest to have a fire, and I was in its way."

Copyright 2003, Rocky Mountain News.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/news/article/0,1299,DRMN_3_1650212,00.html

The analysis for the Hayman fire can be downloaded at: http://www.fs.fed.us/rm/