Much work remains to restore and protect Black Forest
EL PASO COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) - Outside of Falcon, Scott McNabb is carefully cutting slabs from a freshly cut ponderosa pine.
They will eventually become benches after they are cleaned up and coated with a special resin.
"It has a nice clear finish on it," he explains.
For the last three years, he has made various types of furniture and wall decorations; business for Black Forest Benches and Things is good.
"I'm telling you, they come from all over. From now until December, it's crazy," he says.
Part of the reason for the popularity of his creations is that the wood he uses was recovered from the Black Forest Fire.
The demand for his products is proof that many people want to remember what happened in 2013.
"They just want to have something that they can remember the forest by," says McNabb.
Today, however, there are far more dead trees standing and on the ground than McNabb could ever put to good use.
Terry Stokka was one of the lucky ones in 2013.
He lost his barn, but his house was spared, thanks to a precision drop of fire retardant directly over his house on Peregrine Way, in the northwest corner of the burn scar, that coated and protected it from the fast-moving flames.
"We had a lot of scrubbing to do," he recalls.
Stokka was part of Black Forest Together, one of several groups that pitched in to clean up dead trees and damaged homes.
However, that group no longer exists, and he estimates that roughly half the land that burned hasn't been touched, largely due to the cost of the cleanup.
"The cost to bring a tree service in, with chippers and all of that, is probably close to $3,000 an acre," he explains.
Multiply that by a few dozen acres in some cases, and it's easy to see why there are still so many untouched patches of land.
"It makes me feel bad because it makes me feel like what we see is kind of what's going to stay for a long time," says Stokka.
His other concern is it could happen again.
He estimates that only a third of Black Forest, just over 14,000 acres, burned.
The rest is still at risk, and unlike government land where crews from the U.S. Forest Service or El Paso County can come in and remove dead and low-hanging branches to thin out the forest and reduce the risk of fire, nearly all the land in Black Forest is privately owned.
That means the burden of doing the work or paying for it, falls on the individual property owners or volunteers willing to help them out.
Another program no longer around is Trees 4 Tomorrow, where people with very young small trees could remove them as a way of thinning out their own property, then donate them to people who lost their trees.
Fortunately, as part of the ten-year anniversary, a new program is coming to life called Regrow to Restore.
Click here to find out how to become a donor or recipient.
