Every family in the Wood River Valley is properly grateful to the several thousand firefighters and volunteers who subdued the raging Castle Rock Fire while also reassuring nervous communities that the potential for ruin would be thwarted by an alert force of structure-protection fire-fighting units.
Now it's time for another thank-you—to the Castle Rock Fire itself. This wildfire probably did more to revise basic thinking here than words could possibly do.
The threat of fire to structures in residential areas, for example, emphasized the need for homeowners to install—and government bodies to require—fire-safe asphalt shingles or metal roofing. Had the Castle Rock flames spewed out burning embers, untreated wooden shingles would have been easily ignited. Major damage to or loss of a home would have been certain.
There wouldn't be enough local firefighters to battle a neighborhood where roof after roof was on fire.
Perhaps the most significant lesson learned was how our daily lives and daily routine are so tightly bound to things we take for granted.
Consider hiking and biking trails. When they were sealed off because of the fire, or continue to be closed because of post-fire risks, people who routinely went to the trails for their daily recreation and exercise found themselves desperately looking for alternatives just as appealing. There's something melancholy about not having a favorite and familiar trail open.
And then there were the heart-stopping moments when flames began licking up the slopes toward the ski runs of Baldy. Here was the iconic, world-renowned symbol of the area threatened by flames that could not only destroy the natural grandeur of the ski mountain, but also inflict devastating losses on ski lifts and cripple ski seasons for many years.
Finally, the fire forced the suspension of Wagon Days and several ancillary events—discouraging thousands of visitors from coming here, and in the process wiping out an important weekend of income for scores of businesses that now face difficult financial futures.
Perhaps as never before, residents understand how inextricably the valley is tied to tourism and how its future is vulnerable to a single crisis.
It also needs to be said again: Day in, day out, we see local firefighters and law enforcement personnel without giving a thought to their importance in our daily lives. Having seen them in action during Castle Rock, can anyone take them for granted ever again?
