City briefs residents on burn scar recovery, flooding
At this time last year, only about 15% of the Waldo Canyon burn scar was covered with vegetation, very little to absorb rainfall.
It is now around 55 percent, according to Recovery Coordinator Gordon Brenner, which means the mountain can now absorb far more rainfall than before.
However, at a special preparedness meeting hosted by the City of Colorado Springs on Thursday night at Eyrie Castle, residents were told flash flooding downstream is still a threat due to the burn scar.
Bill and Jackie Brown were among the dozens of homeowners who attended.
The Browns lost their Pleasant Valley home to the fire in 2012, and rebuilt.
They believe in the years following the fire, the city and other agencies have done a tremendous job of minimizing the threat of future fires and floods.
“I think they’re making as reasonable of an effort as possible,” said Bill Brown.
Emergency management officials say what makes flash flooding so dangerous is sediment, carried downstream at high speeds, so over the past two years several “catchment basins” were built along Camp Creek and Douglas Creek.
“The whole purpose of those big basins is to capture the water as it comes down, slow it down, get the sediment out of it, so that the water can continue on without injuring people downstream,” explained Brenner.
Heavy metal nets at the south end of the basins were designed to stop torpedoes from hitting Navy ships, and ironically, they might just have to do that in Colorado Springs, with torpedo-like trees.
Three to four years after a fire, dead trees tend to come down, and there are a lot of them still standing in the Waldo Canyon area.
“Those tree trunks will move into the stream, float downstream, and get into the city,” said Brenner.
Brenner says they can’t stop the trees from falling.
All they can do is hope these basins hold up.
It’s expected to take 8-10 years before the burn scar is totally re-vegetated, but it will take several generations before the trees return.
