From becoming teen parents; to surviving traumatic injuries and illness; working as a mental health nurse and Denver firefighter; raising five children; and finally building their dream home in the mountains, the Hilemans lived enough over their 68-year marriage to fill a book.

And in the wake of their deaths when the East Troublesome fire consumed their , that����ap exactly what their son started to do.

Glenn Hileman was one of the last people to speak to his mother the night of Oct. 21, 2020, as his parents watched the East Troublesome fire roar toward their beloved mountain home.

The couple did not evacuate the fire and tried to shelter in a concrete-lined bunker in their basement. They died of asphyxiation and were found, locked arm in arm, two days after the fire destroyed their house, according to Glenn Hileman.

“There was so much emotion and shock from the way things unfolded. I started hearing my siblings talking about different experiences they had with my mom and dad, some I had heard before, some I hadn’t, and I started writing them down for my own sake,” he said. “Really it was just from my own grief, and hope of being able to retain some of those stories.”

He kept writing with the encouragement of his wife, who suggested the stories could become a journal or biography to pass on to their children, and the project grew into a book. “A Yellow House in the Mountains: A Story of Love and Refinement,” is set to publish on Feb. 23.

The book chronicles the many highs and lows of Lyle and Marylin Hileman’s lives, including the couple’s unconventional beginning.

Marylin Hileman became pregnant at 15 years old, and the couple traveled with their parents outside of Denver to get married so they could avoid the wedding being published in The Denver Post.

“They were a very unlikely match,” Glenn Hileman said. “My mom was a church girl, and their life got off to a rough start – my dad was a little bit of a hoodlum. Yet together, they made a commitment and their love kept them moving. They worked really hard to try to be examples to their children.”

And while the book includes some embellishments, Glenn Hileman said, the power of their story is the same.

“I feel like they’d smile from above, just knowing that other people can learn from their mistakes,” he said.

The book’s final chapters detail Lyle and Marylin Hileman’s last day – the day the East Troublesome fire exploded into a firestorm, raging across 18 miles in a matter of hours.

Colorado’s second-largest wildfire was sparked by humans on Oct. 14, 2020, 15 miles northeast of Kremmling in the Arapaho National Forest. It grew by 120,000 acres overnight on Oct. 21, 2020, destroying more than 500 homes and other structures.

The couple was aware of the wildfire but didn’t expect it to reach Grand Lake for weeks, talking about the steps they took to prepare while eating dinner with a friend the night of Oct. 21.

That same friend tried to reach the Hilemans just hours later when he heard about the fire picking up speed, calling at 8 p.m. to let the couple know he was coming to get them.

Accompanied by a national park ranger, the Hileman’s friend tried to reach their home while dodging trees falling across the road in the firestorm. When they were a mile away, Marylin Hileman called back to tell them not to come because it was too dangerous and they wouldn’t be able to get out, Glenn Hileman wrote.

Marylin Hileman called her son at 9:30 p.m. while she and her husband sheltered in the basement.

She was calm, stating that it was “the big one,” and that their neighbor’s house was on fire. She asked Glenn Hileman to call his siblings to tell them the couple was safe and together.

By the time Glenn Hileman had called his siblings and called her back at 10 p.m., there was no answer.

Glenn Hileman and his family stayed up late listening to emergency scanners but did not hear anything about their parents’ fate, finally falling asleep around 3 a.m.

At exactly 5 a.m., Glenn Hileman said he was awoken by the sound of his mother’s laughter.

“I knew in that moment they were gone,” he said. “We wouldn’t confirm (that they could not have survived) for another several hours, but I think that����ap the way I love to remember my mom. Wherever it is they went, they were celebrating and having a reunion with family and friends.”

In the four years since, the Hileman family built a private pavilion and park on the property, a wish Marylin Hileman shared with her son just weeks before she died. The family is also rebuilding the Hileman’s home.

“It����ap my hope this book will keep the memories of their lives alive and help others deal with loss in ways that are productive,” he said. “I’m hoping something good comes from it.”

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The Telluride Fire Protection District is partnering with the San Miguel Power Association and an artificial intelligence company – Pano AI – to use the technology to fight against wildfires, officials from the three groups announced Wednesday.

Pano AI combines existing fire-detection technology with artificial intelligence, using high-definition, 360-degree cameras, alongside satellite feeds and other data to detect possible new fires, Chief Commercial Officer Arvind Satyam said. Computers – backed up by humans – will monitor the video and data streams, alerting firefighters when wildfires spark.

The year-long pilot program will use four high-ground sites across eastern San Miguel County with two cameras per site, John Bennett, Telluride Fire Protection District Chief, said. The system should be up and running by early summer.

“We’re looking forward to utilizing this technology to better enhance not only our response model but also to reduce our risk profile as we respond to wildfires in the future,” Bennett said.

Not only will the AI detection system warn firefighters when wildfires ignite but it will also offer more information for prescribed burns, Satyam said. The San Miguel Power Association will also have access to fire data to make sure it can protect its electric grid and infrastructure.

The wildfire-detection system is new for eastern San Miguel County , Satyam said. Pano AI has already partnered with the Aspen Fire Department and Boulder County, among others, and those systems started working late last year. The company also has cameras set up in California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington as well as sites in Australia.

At each site the two cameras rotate every minute, looking to detect plumes in the air, Satyam said. The technology can differentiate between things like wildfire smoke and a cloud of dust kicked up by tractors on gravel roads.

Typically the cameras have a range of about 10 miles but in Colorado’s more mountainous terrain that range is closer to five miles, Satyam said.

“We’ve spent a lot of time training the system to detect smoke in mountainous environments,” Satyam said.

When a fire is detected by artificial intelligence, that data is double-checked by a human team before it����ap passed on to emergency responders.

Should the pilot program work well, Bennett said he’d want to expand it to additional lookout sites further west.

“We’re really excited about getting this on the ground,” he said.

State officials repeatedly warned last year that Colorado could have faced its worst wildfire year in history but their fears never materialized. The Marshall Fire – the most destructive in Colorado – sparked in late 2021, following the massive Cameron Peak, East Troublesome and Pine Gulch fires the year before.

Climate change is worsening wildfire conditions, causing the fires to burn hotter and spread wider. Rather than preparing for a wildfire season, Colorado officials say the risk lingers all year long now and they continue to question whether the state is prepared for the next massive fire.

Wildfire risk is made worse in Colorado – and across the West – by the ongoing megadrought plaguing the entire Colorado River Basin.

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The two fires burned a combined 400,000 acres in 2020 and are the No. 1 and No. 2 largest wildfires in the state’s recorded history. They’ve also left correspondingly massive burn scars that threaten watersheds and increase the risk of mudslides during downpours.

U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis and U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, all Democrats, were planning to send a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore on Monday asking for quicker distribution of recovery money and to expedite permitting for local recovery efforts.

“Two years after the largest wildfires in our state’s history, it����ap unacceptable that the affected communities are still fighting for the funding they need to restore forests and watersheds,” Bennet said in a statement.

The letter calls it “imperative” for the Forest Service to start distributing $50 million already set aside for recovery efforts in the Arapaho Roosevelt National Forest. It also notes that local agencies estimate a $228 million shortfall to remediate hundreds of thousands of acres of fire damage in the forest.

Polis’ spokesperson, Conor Cahill, said the governor plans to bring up the issue directly with federal officials when he’s in Washington, D.C., for the National Governors Association meeting this week.

Both fires were in Neguse’s district, which was also Polis’s when he was in Congress before his 2018 election to the governor’s office.

“Watershed recovery is vital for the health and well-being of Coloradans, and the consequences of the East Troublesome and Cameron Peak Fires require urgent action,” Neguse said.

Hickenlooper said in a statement that “wildfires keep threatening communities long after the flames go out. Whether is mudslides after heavy rains or the risk posed to our drinking water, we have to keep up our recovery efforts.”

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The fire, which started on Oct. 14, 2020, scorched 193,812 acres, about 302 square miles, in Grand County, hopping the Continental Divide and charring areas in Grand Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park and on the edge of Estes Park.

“Based on evidence gathered at the fire’s origin, investigators have determined the fire to be human caused,” the U.S. Forest Service said in a news release.

The USDA Forest Service Law Enforcement & Investigations, along with the Grand County Sheriff’s Office, continue an ongoing investigation in to the fire.

“Given the location and time of year that the fire started, it may have been caused by a hunter or a backcountry camper, and possibly by accident,” the release said. “Investigators from both agencies are working to identify the person or persons responsible for starting the fire.”

More than 300 homes and between 100 and 200 secondary structures, such as barns and garages, were destroyed by the wildfire. Lyle and Marylin Hileman, 86 and 84, respectively, died in the fire when their home, just outside Grand Lake, was destroyed. The fire was fully contained on Dec. 1, 2020.

The largest wildfire in Colorado, in terms of acres burned, is the Cameron Peak fire. It burned 208,913 acres in 2020 in Larimer and Jackson counties, Arapahoe and Roosevelt National Forest,  Rocky Mountain National Park and surrounding communities.

Plus millions of acres of forest across the state need to be cleared of dead and dying foliage to prevent new wildfires or at least stop them from growing so large.

The President Joe Biden signed into law last month set aside for watershed restoration projects and wildfire mitigation work. But however much of that comes to Colorado, which U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse estimates will be “tens of millions,” won’t be enough. No additional money is guaranteed either, after West Virginia’s that he won’t support Biden’s $2.2 trillion climate, tax and spending plan, the .

The Cameron Peak and East Troublesome burn scars sit top of mind for Neguse and many other state and local officials who recall the grim 2020 season that sparked the two largest wildfires in Colorado’s history. Estimates to restore those two areas alone range as high as $150 million. Mitigation and restoration work across the rest of the state would cost billions.

“The scale and scope of the need is breathtaking,” Neguse said. “We have long unmet needs here in our community and if we don’t address them now, we’re likely to reap the consequences for years to come.”

That means more massive wildfires, Justin Kirkland, Gypsum Fire Protection District chief, said. And more flash floods like the deadly one that flowed through Fort Collins in July and more mudslides like those that forced officials to close Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon later in the summer.

“We’re seeing different fires. First they called them ‘large fires,’ now they’re called ‘megafires.’ They just keep getting bigger and bigger,” Kirkland said. “Unless we change what we’re doing it����ap going to get worse and worse.”

Mitigating and preventing wildfires

Year after year, Colorado is seeing drier conditions and more people are moving into or near the wilderness, said Kirkland, whose fire district covers 455 square miles from the Eagle County Regional Airport west toward Glenwood Springs.

Not only are wildfires inevitable but population shifts mean more people and their homes are at risk.

“Ground moisture is just so dry, fuel moisture is just so dry, we don’t have much ground cover,” Kirkland said. Forests in the district, bisected by Interstate 70, are “just ready for a fire.”

“That makes us very nervous,” Kirkland said.

His crew consists of eight full-time staffers, nine part-timers and an annual budget of $1.7 million. Kirkland said he used to have a roster of 30 volunteers but now that����ap down to 11.

They can’t afford to cover wildfires as extensively as they could in the past.

“It all costs money,” Kirkland said. “Every person we call, every aircraft. None of it����ap free.”

The more cost-effective way to fight wildfires is to invest in mitigation and prevention work, he said. Crews can remove dead and dying trees, thin forests and build fire breaks. But the Gypsum fire district can’t afford to do that work alone so they must partner with other government agencies, private organizations and nonprofits.

Much of the state’s wildfire risk sits on federal forest lands, according to Dan Gibbs, executive director of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. About 65% of the state’s forests belong to the federal government, the state Forest Service estimates.

The risk is also substantial along the Front Range, said U.S. Rep. Jason Crow.

“Tens of thousands of homes and dozens of communities have grown into high fire risk areas in the foothills and mountains,” Crow said.

In all, about 2.4 million acres of forest are “in urgent need of treatment to address forest health, wildfire risk and watershed protection threats,” the 2020 Colorado Forest Action Plan notes.

Watershed management and restoring burn scars

While there’s prevention and mitigation work to be done on the front end, widespread restoration work is needed along watersheds already scorched by wildfires, Gibbs said.

Wildfires actually burn the ground itself, torching all the organic material around so all that����ap left is an ash-laden “powdery dust,” Adam Jokerst, Greeley’s deputy director for water resources, said. Nothing remains to absorb rain or snowfall, which then leads to flash floods and mudslides.

People also can’t drink that water, Jokerst said. Nor can Greeley, which supplies water to about 150,000 people, treat it at its Bellvue Water Treatment Plant northwest of Fort Collins.

“All that sediment comes down into the river and it turns the water jet black,” Jokerst said. “Picture ‘Pennzoil.’ That����ap what it looks like. Black oil.”

While water from Greeley’s main water source, the Cache la Poudre River, was undrinkable, Jokerst said the city was able to take water from its Horsetooth Reservoir and a treatment plant in Loveland. But that����ap expensive and as wildfires continue to surge across the state, those supplemental options shrink.

“It����ap inevitable that these types of fires are going to increase the cost of water,” Jokerst said.

To restore burn scars, crews can drop heavy wood mulch by helicopter, install long tubes of straw called wattles on slopes and other blocks in streams and channels to catch sediment, Jokerst said.

“We need roots in the soil, that����ap the only thing that����ap going to stop the erosion of a watershed in the long run,” he said.

And that work takes time, Gibbs added, noting that utilities like Denver Water pay millions each year to restore decades-old burn scars. He mentioned the , which burned through nearly 12,000 acres southwest of Denver.

“If you’re a mountain biker and you go out there right now, it does not look like it did in 1990,” Gibbs said. “They’ve seen very little revegetation.”

For context, the East Troublesome fire burned nearly 194,000 acres in Grand County and Rocky Mountain National Park. The Cameron Peak fire burned nearly 209,000 acres in the Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests, Rocky Mountain National Park and Larimer and Jackson counties.

Gibbs noted that the Grizzly Creek fire scar, spanning more than 32,000 acres east of Glenwood Springs, must also be restored.

Finding money for mitigation and restoration

Some state funds are available for the prevention, mitigation and restoration work. And more became available from bills passed by the legislature this year than ever before, Gibbs said.

earmarked $30 million for watershed restoration and  set aside $29.9 million this year and $1.8 million next year for wildfire mitigation.

But that����ap not much relative to the need, which the state forest plan estimates is about $4.2 billion.

Restoring the East Troublesome scar alone will cost an estimated $50 million, Gibbs said. For the Cameron Peak scar that number’s closer to $70 million (Neguse and Jokerst estimated $100 million).

More money is on the way from the bipartisan infrastructure bill, but nobody knows how much. Neguse acknowledged that his estimate of tens of millions allows for a wide range of possibilities.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is responsible for allocating the money and officials there said it����ap too early to say how much states will receive.

Angela Boag, with the state Department of Natural Resources, said once the USDA finalizes its allocations some money will come to the DNR to dole out, some will be handed out directly by the federal government.

Understanding the funding mechanisms alone is complicated, said Boag, who works as deputy director for climate, forest health and energy. She expressed frustration that months likely remain before state officials will understand how much money they can expect.

However much money does come to Colorado, it’ll fall short, Jokerst said. Just this year, crews dropped mulch from helicopters over more than 6,000 acres of the Cameron Peak scar, less than 3% of the total area. All told, the work cost about $18 million, broken into about $87 per minute, per helicopter, he said.

“It goes quickly,” Jokerst said.

Plus, there are added complications.

Neguse said a $300 million chunk in the bipartisan infrastructure bill is earmarked for watershed protection but it can’t be spent on federal lands. Neguse wrote to USDA officials asking for more flexibility with that money, but so far told The Denver Post he hasn’t yet heard back.

Colorado’s U.S. representatives Jason Crow, Ed Perlmutter, Diana DeGette and senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper also signed that letter.

Money from the bipartisan bill amounts to a downpayment for the country’s forests and watersheds, Neguse said. But it doesn’t offer ongoing funding. For that, he pointed to the Build Back Better Act, which includes $27 billion for more mitigation and restoration work.

In light of Manchin’s opposition to Build Back Better, though, Crow said the bill’s future is uncertain and more negotiations are needed in the coming weeks. If Congress can’t pass the measure in its entirety, he said perhaps different parts of it could be pulled out and passed individually.

“We just don’t know right now,” Crow said. “It����ap a week-by-week situation.”

Crow pointed to Congressional Republicans who have consistently voted against these types of funding mechanisms. U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, whose sprawling Western Slope district includes much of Colorado’s at-risk forests, and the .

Crow called Boebert����ap opposition to those measures “quizzical.” Representatives for Boebert did not reply to a message seeking comment.

Consistent funding for mitigation and restoration work would not only make Colorado safer but it would also create jobs and pump money into the state’s economy, Crow said. And without that investment, the state will inevitably see more of the same devastation that has swept through in recent years.

The overnight closure — from 10 p.m. Tuesday to 6 a.m. Wednesday — at exit 116 (Glenwood Springs) is necessary to pave a temporary lane in the eastbound median so construction can continue on the retaining wall, the Colorado Department of Transportation said Monday in a news release.

The interstate in Glenwood Canyon has taken a beating this summer from repeated mudslides that have led to numerous closures. The slides are the result of the Grizzly Creek fire last summer, which torched more than 32,000 acres.

Colorado saw its worst fire season last year, with the three largest fires in state history and . But some of the effects didn’t appear until this July, when heavy rain pushed sediment from damaged forests down mountainsides, causing mudslides that for almost two weeks.

Immense quantities of sediment choked the rivers that supply most of the state’s water. In western Colorado’s Glenwood Springs, the water became so murky that the town twice had to shut off the valves that pump water from nearby rivers to avoid overwhelming its filtration system. City managers sent alerts to the town’s 10,000 residents, telling them to minimize water use until the sediment moved downstream.

Wildfires and their lasting effects are becoming a way of life in the West as climate change and management practices cause fires to increase in number, intensity and acreage burned, while extending the length of the fire season. In “burn scars,” where fires decimated forest systems that held soil in place, an increase in droughts followed by heavy rainfall poses a different kind of threat to the water supplies that are essential to the health of communities.

“You know about it; it����ap in the back of your head,” said Glenwood Springs resident Paula Stepp. “But until you face it, you don’t know how it����ap going to impact your town.”

Dirty, turbid water and other contaminants that cause illness. But experts say turbid water from burn scars is unlikely to make it to people’s taps, because water utilities would catch it first.

Still, the cost to municipal utility systems — and the residents who pay for water — is immense. Rural small towns in particular face the choice between spending millions of dollars to try to filter turbid water or shutting off their intake and risking shortages in areas where water may already be scarce.

And as fires move closer to communities, burning synthetic materials from houses and other buildings can create toxic compounds that leach into water supplies, which is what happened in California

“When we put [fires] out, we become less aware of them,” said , of Oregon State University. But from a water perspective, “that����ap when all the problems start.”

Montana’s capital city, Helena, gets its drinking water supply from the Upper Tenmile Creek watershed in a forest thick with trees killed by beetle infestations. City leaders worry a fire would quickly chew through that dry fuel and leave the watershed exposed to sediment contamination. , the fire threat remains and city leaders worry the resulting sediment would overwhelm the water treatment plant and shut down the primary water source for 40,000 people.

“If we had a fire up there, depending on where it is and how big it is, it could put the Tenmile plant out for a season or two,” Helena Public Works Director Ryan Leland said.

To protect against that happening, the city is in the early phases of designing a basin that can trap sediment before the water reaches the plant, Leland. , which would give them another drinking water supply option if something happens to the Upper Tenmile watershed. Treated water from the Missouri River is the city’s current backup supply.

The Rocky Mountains and about 200 miles separate Glenwood Springs from Greeley, in northeastern Colorado. But the 2020 fire season caused similar problems in both cities, creating burn scars that later flooded, contaminating water sources.

So far this year, Greeley has had to shut off its intake from the Cache la Poudre River for 39 days because the water was contaminated with sediment, ash and organic matter. “Normally we would never turn it off,” said .

To cope, the city has been trading water with a nearby agricultural company that owns reservoirs used for irrigation. The swap gives the turbid water to farmers and redirects the reservoir water to Greeley. “If we didn’t have the trade in place, the cost [of buying water] would be astronomical,” Chambers said.

But Chambers admitted this system is a luxury that smaller towns may not enjoy. Greeley is 10 times the size of Glenwood Springs and has spent more than $40 million this year recovering from the Cameron Peak Fire — the largest fire in Colorado history, which burned for four months in 2020. Those costs may climb as rain continues, he said. Larger towns also tend to have better filtration systems that can handle more sediment, which clogs up filters and requires utilities to add chemicals to remove contaminants before the water is safe to drink.

While dry states like Colorado expect fires each year, recent blazes in wetter places like western Oregon have caught researchers off guard. Last September, of the state’s Cascade mountain range, leaving burn scars above rivers and reservoirs that supply much of the state’s water.

“We have to be very proactive,” said a research engineer with the U.S. Forest Service in Moscow, Idaho

After a wildfire is extinguished, Robichaud’s agency and others send teams of specialists to evaluate the risks that erosion and ash pose to water supplies. Their data can help land managers decide whether to take actions like thinning forests above rivers, dredging contaminated reservoirs, covering the area with mulch or seeds to reduce erosion, or forming a plan for alternative water sources.

Even advance notice of a flood could help immensely, said Stepp, the Glenwood Springs resident. She is the executive director of the nonprofit , which recently worked with the U.S. Geological Survey to along Glenwood Canyon. These monitor weather upstream and notify downstream water users that a sediment-laden flood could be coming.

She said it is crucial for small communities in particular to partner with state and federal agencies. “Basically, we work with everybody,” she said.

Although debris flows can bring soil bacteria into water supplies, city utilities can disinfect them with chemicals like chlorine, said , a hydrologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder. But those disinfectants can themselves cause a problem: Organic matter from sediment can interact with these chemicals and create carcinogenic byproducts that are difficult and expensive to remove.

Another waterborne danger comes from chemical byproducts and heavy metals from burned structures. “Those would be potentially really problematic to treat,” Livneh said.

After the 2017 Tubbs and 2018 Camp fires that devastated the Northern California communities of Santa Rosa and Paradise, researchers examining the tap water of nearby homes found benzene and other carcinogens. Public health researcher at the Public Health Institute in Oakland, California, said the contamination likely came from plastic pipes that melted and leached chemicals into the water.

Smoke and ash from burned structures may also add toxic chemicals to water supplies. “The smoke from the fires is a truly nasty brew,” Solomon said.

California has been relatively lucky when it comes to sediment flow. The years-long drought in most of the state means burn scars remain intact — though a heavy rain could wash down years of debris.

It����ap unclear how long burn scars continue to pose a landslide risk, said Bladon, the Oregon hydrologist. But parts of Alberta in the Canadian Rockies, for instance, continued to see extremely turbid water for a decade after a 2003 fire.

“My fear is we may not have seen the worst of it yet,” Solomon said.

is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

For people on Colorado’s West Slope, massive mud and rock slides could mean empty spots on store shelves as detours add hours to truck drivers’ routes. For trucking companies, the delays make keeping trucks rolling despite an ongoing driver shortage that much tougher.

“I think this is like the ninth ring of hell, Dante’s ninth ring of hell right now,” said Greg Fulton, president and CEO of the

The Colorado Department of Transportation is assessing the damage to I-70 from the debris and several feet of mud that cascaded down the canyon’s steep slopes during recent heavy monsoon rains. Little vegetation exists to stop the flows where the Grizzly Creek wildfire burned last year.

Gov. Jared Polis said Monday that I-70 may not reopen for days or even weeks and when it does, traffic will likely be one lane in each direction.

To circumvent the closed road, commercial trucks drive north into Wyoming to use Interstate 80 or get off at Silverthorne and drive north to U.S. 40 and west before reconnecting with I-70 via Colorado 13 at Rifle.

“That adds anywhere from two-and-a-half to five hours, depending on the amount of traffic and things like that,” Fulton said of trucks going to western Colorado.

A lot of the fuel and food for the West Slope is shipped out of Denver, Fulton said. Drivers often do what’s called “a drop and hook.” The driver delivers a load in Grand Junction or other spots, picks up another load or an empty trailer and returns to Denver.

If I-70 is open that can be done in one day, but Fulton said the detour turns the trip into two days to allow for the driver’s required 10-hour rest period.

“You need more drivers and more equipment to service the same amount of needs. It costs more time. It costs more money and when you already have a driver shortage, it stretches things and makes things that much more difficult,” Fulton said. “That’s when you start to see fuel running out at gas stations, certain things not appearing on some of the store shelves.”

Regional and national shortages have been common during the pandemic. Factory closures and disruptions of the supply chain around the globe held up production and deliveries and the knots are still being worked out. The trucking industry didn’t have enough drivers before COVID-19 hit and the shortage has worsened as older drivers have retired.

“Due to the Glenwood Canyon road closure we are redirecting our trucks and currently anticipate a 5-6 hour delay in our deliveries,” King Soopers spokeswoman Jessica Trowbridge said in an email. “Our teams are monitoring the situation and are working diligently to get products to all impacted stores as quickly as possible.”

During the closure, CDOT is working with neighboring states to direct commercial traffic to I-80 in Wyoming, spokeswoman Elise Thatcher said in an email.

Thatcher said the daily number of commercial vehicles on I-70 varies, depending on the location. On average, 2,850 trucks travel daily on I-70 past Exit 87 at West Rifle, the main closure point on the west side and where the detour reconnects with I-70. Fewer trucks, on average, 2,080 per day, travel on I-70 past Exit 133 at Dotsero, the closure point on the east.

And an average of 4,600 commercial trucks drive past Exit 205 at Silverthorne, the exit for vehicles taking the northern detour.

Diane Schwenke, president and CEO of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce, said Tuesday that she hasn’t heard of any major problems for local businesses due to the closure.

Between fires and rock slides, closures of I-70 are nothing new.

“We’ve been able to get through it,” Schwenke said. “I’m sure we will this time around,”

But an extended closure will delay shipments to and from Grand Junction and require drivers to log more hours, which will drive up costs, Schwenke fears. Some of the area’s shipments, including supplies for restaurants, come from Salt Lake City, so those won’t be affected.

While she’s hopeful the highway won’t be closed for long, Schwenke said the damage and debris shown in a video shot by a CDOT drone was daunting.

“We have Peach Fest coming up in two weeks and we want to see a lot of visitors from the Front Range,” Schwenke said.

The is Aug. 20-21.

At the time, it was the second-largest wildfire in state history. But the historic 2020 wildfire season is presenting an entirely different beast.

“We’re looking at 20,000 acres (of wood mulch) just for Cameron Peak,” said Brad Piehl, a forest hydrologist consultant working with state and local authorities. “The scale of these things is probably 10 times worse than what we’ve seen before.”

Wide swaths of Colorado are charred to their core after the three largest wildfires in the state’s recorded history last summer — but the dangers of those infernos often are only seen after the smoke has long cleared.

Flash flooding in the Poudre Canyon on Tuesday left one person dead and three more missing as monsoonal rains over Cameron Peak’s massive burn scar sent water cascading through the canyon.

Larimer County officials are now quickly working to prevent another disaster from hitting the same area.

The search for the three missing people continued Friday, while emergency personnel were beginning the long slog of clearing debris and preventing key waterways from damming.

The name of the game right now is education and awareness for those in the canyon, said Jered Kramer, a Larimer County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.

“We’re trying to help people remember to be mindful of their surroundings since situations can change so quickly,” he said.

That means climbing quickly to higher ground when people see water coming, because “you may only have a moment to move as you hear an alert,” Kramer said.

As authorities anxiously watch weather patterns over the next week, crews will work to remove the debris that came along with the flash flood — a process that could take a week or two, said Lori Hodges, Larimer County’s director of emergency management.

The priorities along the river are safety concerns and debris blocking bridges, she said. There are two temporary sites where crews can haul the runoff before it’s eventually taken to a landfill.

When rain does come, there’s a significant potential for other watersheds in the area to see similar flooding.

“We’re definitely very concerned about the impacts we could have from another flood event,” Hodges said. “The next couple weeks will be pretty critical.”

Wood mulch has proven effective in mitigating after wildfires, Piehl said, but the “scope and scale of the Cameron Peak fire is something we haven’t experienced.”

“I don’t think we understand how to respond to the scale of that fire,” Piehl said.

Climate scientists have warned that the warming planet will create — worsening fires and their aftereffects across Colorado and the West.

Flash flooding and mudslides in recent weeks have forced repeated closures of Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon, along with other roadways in Colorado’s High Country, as transportation officials prepare drivers for further closures during the monsoonal period.

Vegetation has started to come back in some areas of the Cameron Peak burn scar, Hodges said, but it can take multiple years in the most serious spots for ground cover to fully return and hold the dirt from sliding down during heavy rain.

For now, officials in Larimer County can only prepare as much as they can and sound the sirens when the weather looks ominous.

“This is gonna be our life,” Kramer, the sheriff’s office spokesman, said.

Both directions of I-70 between Dotsero and Rifle were open by about 4 p.m., according to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

The interstate was closed Saturday afternoon along the Grizzly Creek burn scar when rain triggered flash floods and five mudslides on the highway. No one was injured.

Some of the slides were as deep as 9 feet, and covered hundreds of feet of the roadway.

During the closure, drivers had been forced to detour through Steamboat Springs — turning a normally 45 minute drive on the interstate into an about four-hour trip.