Two archaeologists clad in neon yellow shirts with notebooks in hand moved through the wildfire’s path, taking notes as they navigated around charred oak trees and pockets of ash. 

Inside a nearby campground, the steel frames of picnic tables remained intact, but not much else survived the lightning-caused South Rim fire that started July 10 and tore through more than 4,000 acres in the national park near Montrose. 

Now, nearly three weeks later, the firefighter count is about 150, down from 500 for the initial attack, and a new team of biologists, hydrologists and soil specialists have moved in to assess post-fire risks and map out the park’s road to recovery. 

The team of specialists, who make up the Burned Area Emergency Response, are looking to see if communities or properties, including prehistoric sites or endangered species habitats in the park, could be at risk of being damaged by a debris flow or flooding if a storm rolled across the scorched soil. They are documenting the loss of native plants and taking inventory of damaged, and potentially dangerous, trails. 

Read more from Olivia Prentzel at ColoradoSun.com.

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