![]() Now it has transitioned into an approach it hopes will ensure the organization is financially viable into the future - taking donated live trees from lots needing to be thinned and selling them, at low cost, to rebuilding homeowners trying to reforest “the black.” It coordinated fire-risk assessments and worked with homeowners’ associations in Black Forest on neighborhood-wide mitigation campaigns. The group has organized chipper drives and hustled grant money to help homeowners clear dead trees or thin out living ones to guard against a future fire. No, was their heartbroken answer.īut those who remained coalesced around a determined community group called Black Forest Together, which began in the days after the fire, tending to burned-out homeowners’ immediate needs. Some residents, overwhelmed by the enormity of the loss and the daunting task of renewal, simply moved away after the fire. The Black Forest fire destroyed nearly 500 homes - still a Colorado record - and forced a community of 13,000 people woven into a thick forest of ponderosa pine northeast of Colorado Springs to confront an existential question: In a state where annual, catastrophic wildfires have become the norm, can a place so dense with trees and homes be rebuilt and made safer at the same time? You really have to be committed to the land to do something like this.” “It’s probably 10 more years of work after the five-year anniversary. ![]() “Every now and then I wonder whether that was the right decision or not, because there’s so much work involved,” Mantia says of his and his wife’s decision to rebuild after their home burned in the 2013 Black Forest fire. Five years after wildfire tore through Black Forest, is the community still at risk? Closeīill Mantia, whose house burned in the Black Forest fire, has put together a template for disaster-struck communities that leads to a sustainable recovery effort. ![]()
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