First looks at the damage path are emerging in the Aspen Acres fire, as more than 11,000 people wait for news on when they can return.

Tuesday afternoon, the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office released a nine-minute video showing fire damage from the air along Pine Drive in Beulah. More footage will be coming out later, the office said.

“This video is being released in an effort to maintain full transparency and inform the public of the condition of the area,” the post read.

The video shows just some of the over 260 homes that have been damaged or destroyed in the Aspen Acres fire, which stood at nearly 94,000 acres as of Tuesday evening. Containment has fluctuated but reached 16%.

Operations Section Chief Brad Washa said that firefighters hoped to shore up perimeters where the fire has been most active in recent days. Firefighters were working on dozer lines and retardant drops near the communities of Wetmore and Greenwood.

In Greenwood, crews were installing sprinklers on the most at-risk homes.

While he said officials were encouraged by the possibility of rain Tuesday, thunderstorms could also cause outflow winds that can lead to erratic fire growth. Too much rain could also be a problem in areas compromised by fire.

“Our major concern is the potential for flooding events, especially if we get significant precipitation and that precipitation falls really fast,” Washa said.

Fire crews were also working on containment along the east and southwest of the fire, in some places prioritizing structure protection within the fire’s perimeter. He said the Rye area was “looking really good” in terms of containment measures.

While containment was increasing, Washa said firefighters were having trouble finding a safe strategy for tackling the fire in rough wilderness terrain on the southwest side. He said two firefighters have been injured while responding, bringing the total to three.

“This isn’t a short-term event. It is going to be a long-term event,” he said.

See The Gazette’s Colorado wildfire map here.

Information trickles in on damaged or destroyed homes

Pueblo County spokesperson Haley Sue Robinson said Tuesday that over one hundred people had so far received calls notifying them that their homes had been destroyed. She said the Sheriff’s Office was prioritizing only home losses and could not provide information yet on other buildings lost.

“They don’t have all of the details of the extent of the damages,” she said.

She said the Sheriff’s Office was still about halfway through the list, but some people were difficult to reach because their landlines were destroyed. Officials urged people to register with the survivor portal at puebloemergency.info with their best contact information.

As of Monday, 185 homes and four businesses have been destroyed or damaged in Pueblo County.

In Custer County, officials scheduled two events on Tuesday to help residents learn about what has happened to their homes. Custer County Sheriff Rich Smith said Monday that 78 homes have been burned.

The first meeting at the Custer County Schools in Westcliffe was for people who live along Highway 165 north of Highway 78 and those near Lake Isabel. The second was scheduled later at the same location for people with property in the Aspen Acres subdivision, close to the fire’s origin point.

Thousands remain displaced

Evacuations remained in place in Custer, Pueblo, Fremont and Huerfano counties, with over 11,000 people currently displaced. Reentry plans are still unknown for much of the impacted area.

The Circle K convenience store on Highway 165, about a mile from a checkpoint leading into Colorado City, did brisk business Tuesday but nothing like this past weekend, according to Amanda, a clerk at the store.

“It was, like, a 4 1/2-hour wait to get into the restroom,” she said.

Jason, a resident of the Rye area who also declined to give his last name, had most of his possessions packed into his pickup truck, where he has been sleeping for five days, he said.

“The (Pueblo County) shelter on Lehigh was too crowded, and they ran out of hotel vouchers,” he said. “So I got no place to go until they let me back into town.”

Four evacuation shelters remained open, including two large-animal shelters. Lange Hall in Westcliffe is open to people and small animals, as is the Pueblo County Recreation Center. Pathfinder Park in Florence and the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo can take large animals.

The Pueblo Community Animal Response Team advised owners on social media to take animals with severe burns directly to a vet clinic instead of the fairgrounds. The page also said shelters need senior horse grain and grass hay donations, which can be dropped off at the fairgrounds Gate 6.

The update said there was “no rush” for owners to pick up their animals.

“No animals will be sent away until the owners are prepared for them to be housed elsewhere,” the post read.

Some evacuations lifted, residents seek reentry

Some of the previously evacuated areas on the fire’s east and southeast side have been partially lifted to allow some residents to return, per an announcement Monday. Those areas will remain under pre-evacuation status.

According to the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office, addresses where people can return are west of I-25, north of Cummings Street, east of S Crow Cutoff, east of Haynes Road and south of Jerry Bass Lane. The full list of approved addresses can be found here.

To return, residents have to obtain a reentry card in person from the Disaster Assistance Center, which on Tuesday was located at 29 Lehigh Ave. in Pueblo. Pueblo County Sheriff David Lucero said that the county was working on an online verification process for property owners, but until then, residents must still register in person.

Having a card does not guarantee access, according to Trysten Garcia, a responder at the Pueblo Joint Information Center. Officials are weighing fire safety, the availability of cleanup services like dumpsters and the restoration of power in choosing which addresses get the greenlight, he said.

“It is who is safest … but then also, how quickly can we get people to resources that exist,” he said.

He said the cards are color-coded by neighborhood to streamline the screening process for checkpoints.

The process has caused some chaos this week. About 200 people awaited reentry cards at the center as of Tuesday afternoon. On Monday, wait times exceeded four hours.

“Once it was announced that there would be a reentry, we got a crush of people and we weren’t prepared for that,” said Pueblo County Commissioner Paula McPheeters. “When I got here at about 3 p.m., I was panicked.”

McPheeters said she felt overwhelmed as she looked at hundreds of confused and frustrated people and dozens of volunteers who wanted to help but weren’t sure how.

“When I saw what was happening, I thought there was only one person I knew who could handle a situation like this,” she said.

The county commissioner phoned Candace Rivera of the Pueblo County Clerk and Recorder’s office.

“I said to Candace, ‘We’ve got to organize this place,’” McPheeter said.

With the help of a handful of staff members, Rivera and Rivera divided the center into two rooms: one strictly for reentry cards and one for other resources.

“We’re good at crowd control,” Rivera said. “On election night, we can get thousands of people through the polls at 10 different locations.”

On Tuesday, the operation was running much more smoothly, with reentry cards taking about an hour.

“We’re expecting three or four more printing machines from the state, to make the cards,” said McPheeter, whose parents were evacuated from their home in Colorado City. “Once we get them, it will be even faster.”

Lake Isabel resident John Waldschmidt received a reentry card on Tuesday morning, but he wasn’t allowed to return yet because the fire is too close to his home, he said.

“My family has been here since the 1960s, so this is the kind of thing we live with,” said Waldschmidt, who is staying with his son in Pueblo until he can go back home. “But this is the worst fire I’ve seen.”

McPheeters attributed the earlier confusion, in part, to a DAC calendar that was published last week. The last day on the calendar was Monday.

“But we have republished since then,” she said.

In the resource center, more than two dozen volunteers were providing food, water, access to emotional support dogs and a variety of other comforts. Volunteers from the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment offered tetanus shots.

“Candace is a Democrat, and I’m a Republican,” McPheeters said. “But that doesn’t matter in a situation like this, because we all want the same thing. Right now, there are no parties.”