Colorado Gov. Bill Owens toured the Bircher Fire, now at more than 23,000 acres, Thursday morning. Owens declared the county a state of disaster emergency late Monday evening, which freed up National Guard and makes some state funds available.

"The state’s role is to try and help afterwards in terms of the economic development funding," said Owens.

Owens said that he believes the state tourism board would look favorably on granting a request for aid to local businesses from their $6 million fund. Montezuma County has contributed to the state’s emergency fire fund, but because there have been 70 fires in the state this year the funds are unusally low. Owens said that the county could see some state funding a soon as a few months after the fire. Montezuma County commissioners and Cortez city officials met with the governor to ask for more assistance.

Mayor Joe Keck said it would cost at least $100,000 to run an effective post-fire marketing program to get tourists back into the area. The commissioners said a loss of revenue from expected sales taxes could hurt the building plans for the new jail, and will hurt the city budget. "This is one of those things we’ve never had to deal with before," said Commissioner Kent Lindsay.

Dry, hot weather with low humidity continues to hamper weeklong efforts to extinguish the Bircher Fire this morning, officials report.

Forecasts show that even higher temperatures are expected for today and tomorrow, heightening fears that a flare-up will occur and negate efforts that have contained an estimated 40 percent of the 23,000-acre fire.

"We’re not pulling any crews off; we’re going full force," said Will Morris, information officer for Mesa Verde National Park.

Gov. Bill Owens arrived at the park at 10:30 a.m. and will take a tour of damaged areas following a private briefing, Morris said. At noon, he will speak with the press corps.

It is unclear whether Owen’s recent declaration that Montezuma County is a disaster area will lead to state financial assistance needed to cover higher-than-normal firefighting costs being absorbed by the county.

"We’re not sure if it means anything," said Tom Weaver, Montezuma County administrator. "Typically it is called for disasters where a lot of private property is destroyed, such as with a hurricane. This wildfire emergency has not damaged a lot of private property."

Ominous pillars of white smoke can still be seen moving farther down the front of the mesa, towards private property and the valley floor. The steep terrain on that north border of the blaze prevents crews from digging fire lines, so it will be hit hard today with air tankers dumping retardant and water, Morris said.

Colorado Governor Bill Owens will visit Mesa Verde National Park this morning to assess the damage caused by the 23,000-acre Bircher Fire, burning since July 20.

Owens will visit with some of the 830 firefighters who have been battling the blaze on National Park, Ute Mountain Tribal Park, Bureau of Land Management and private lands. As of Thursday morning, officials estimated the fire was 40 percent contained.

Much of that containment has been achieved with the aid of natural barriers: the Mancos River on the east and southeast, old burns on the south and west, and the north rim of the mesa. At dusk Wednesday, dramatic flames were visible along the top of that cliff.

A violent thunderstorm swept through southwestern Colorado only a few miles east of the fire late Wednesday afternoon, and an area between Hesperus and Bayfield received high winds and torrential, if brief, rainfall. The fire zone was spared the brunt of that storm, although gusty winds fanned the flames in some areas.

Earlier this week, the governor issued a disaster declaration at the request of the county commissioners. That proclamation will help to qualify the area for state funding to help fight the fire and mitigate its effects. The issue of assistance for tourism-related businesses affected by the fire has been complicated because the fire has burned mostly on public land.

Amid persistent rumors that the Bircher fire could have been prevented from spreading into a major conflagration, onlookers watched this week as red flames crept down the mesa and closer to town.

But by Wednesday afternoon, milder weather and new resources had helped slow the fire in and around Mesa Verde National Park. Approximately 23,000 acres had burned, up only slightly from the previous day, and 25 percent of the fire was considered contained.

"We’re starting to play a little catch-up," said fire spokesman Justin Dombrowski. "I can’t tell you how many days we were sitting there at 0 and 5 percent containment."

But fire officials have yet to address local rumors that the Bircher fire could have been suppressed within its first half hour.

A number of local residents say that National Park Service officials, concerned about the potential of disturbing Anasazi ruins that might lie underground, prevented the Mancos Fire Department from bulldozing a line within the park boundary after the fire was first sparked last Thursday afternoon.

The fire reportedly started in trees on private land, the result of a lightning strike that caused a blaze that apparently smoldered an unknown time before it was spotted.

The Mancos Fire Department was dispatched to the area, and shortly thereafter, all the local fire departments were called to the scene, as it was evident the blaze was spreading rapidly, roaring across the valley and toward the mesa.

County bulldozers and water trucks were also called to the area.

"In cutting the ’dozer line around the property there was approximately 200 yards of ’dozer path we couldn’t cut onto at Mesa Verde property," said one volunteer firefighter who spoke on condition of anonymity. "From that not being connected, that’s where it started."

Les Ham, a firefighter with the Cortez Fire Department, said he and his crew were sent to Road 38 and found the fire raging.

"When I got there it was burning in a field on 38, and going up the mountain," he said. "It was probably 300 acres then. It was hot."

Ham said he was not present when the bulldozers were allegedly turned back, but that he had heard the same story, that the fire break could not be completed because of concern about archaeological resources.

Mancos Fire Chief Lyle Cox said Tuesday he would have no comment on the fire until after it had been put out.

"There are a lot of fingers being pointed," said park spokesman Will Morris on Wednesday. "Everyone’s playing armchair quarterback and making guesses."

Morris said he could not comment on what had happened with this particular fire, but that park regulations and its fire plan do specifically prohibit bulldozers from being used in areas with sensitive archaeological resources. The only exception, he said, is that heavy equipment can be used to protect structures within the park, such as its museum and hotel — both because of their value and because those areas have already been disturbed.

Bulldozers were on site this week to defend park buildings, but so far have not been necessary, he said.

"It (the policy) was park-generated and it was approved up and down the line," Morris said. Park employees don’t have the authority to decide to disregard it, he explained.

	FLAMES FROM the Bircher Fire feast on extremely dry piñon and juniper brush along the northern face of the mesa Tuesday afternoon.

"It’s a standing park policy," he said. "It would be the same way if somebody said, ‘We want to hold a rock concert in Cliff Palace.’ The superintendent can’t just say, ‘Go ahead.’ He or she is constrained by the policy.

"We don’t have the choice of saying, ‘Oh, yeah, we can bring in the ’dozers.’"

Cortez City Manager Hal Shepherd said Wednesday that the issue of bulldozing on national-park lands will have to be looked at in the future. Shepherd said the first priority should be to get the fire out.

Fire information officer Sheila McLean said that the Type I Interagency Fire Management Team would depart when the fire was controlled, and analysis of the firefighting effort would be conducted by the National Park Service after the smoke had cleared.

"This team won’t have the final word on how that will happen," McLean said. "We’re very expensive, and you don’t want us around any longer than you need us."

Strong winds blew into Cortez Tuesday evening, blanketing the city with smoke and ash and pushing the fire to the north and south. Yet since it moved over the north side of the mesa, the fire has spread very little on its path toward the valley floor.

Most of the destruction occurred on July 23, when 9,000 acres were burned in one day. Since then, the fire’s growth has slowed, but officials are still concerned that areas out of containment could rage again if current weather patterns change.

Bircher remains several miles east of Far View Lodge and the Cliff Palace ruins, where firefighters are concentrating their defensive efforts. Morris said that bulldozers are in place at Far View to prevent the fire’s spread.

Morefield Campground’s structures at the entrance to the park were saved from near destruction by firefighters’ defensive efforts over the weekend.

In addition to the loss of wildlife and vegetation in Mesa Verde, the fire has burned 3,089 acres of the Ute Mountain Tribal Park and approximately 400 acres of private land since it was sparked last Thursday afternoon.

Fighting Bircher has cost the federal government approximately $1,882,500. The Type I team was brought in on Tuesday to manage the more than 770 firefighters and personnel battling the blaze. Thirty-nine fire engines, six bulldozers, three helicopters and two tankers reportedly are being utilized against the fire. Officials expect several more crews and equipment to be added soon.

Park officials are making plans to reopen the park to employees as soon as the slippery slurry is cleared off the main road and guardrails are replaced.

Other fires in the area were helped with resources from Bircher. The Hovenweep fire was fully contained on Tuesday. It burned 1,525 acres 20 miles northwest of Cortez in Hovenweep Canyon .

Seven new fires were started by dry lightning on Tuesday evening approximately 15 miles southeast of Mesa Verde National Park, and lightning strikes were reported Wednesday afternoon as well.

MESA VERDE Superintendent Larry Wiese comforts Julie Bell, an archaeologist with the park, moments after she broke down at a press conference Tuesday night when asked about the emotional impact of the fire on its employees. Bell is one of the park residents that have been forced to leave their homes.

At the request of the Montezuma County commissioners, Gov. Bill Owens on Monday declared a "state of disaster emergency" for the Bircher Fire, which has been burning on and around Mesa Verde National Park since July 20.

"The state is ready to help the local community with the resources it may need to fight this fire and get it under control," said Owens.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the fire had devoured more than 23,000 acres of private, BLM, Ute Mountain Ute and national-park land.

A rash of wildfires around the western United States has made it difficult to obtain the resources needed to battle such a conflagration.

On Monday, the commissioners made a county-wide disaster declaration and asked Owens to do the same at the state level.

Owens made the official state designation late Monday evening, according to media spokesperson Amy Sampson in the governor’s office.

Sampson said that the state disaster designation will kick the county disaster plan into effect and will provide state resources in order to help the local residents and fire crews.

"Essentially, it allows the Colorado National Guard to be dispatched to the fire site and provide support — and also, monetarily, it will help the local government. . .as far as the cost that they have incurred," Sampson said.

In a press release, Owens said, "The state has dispatched two dozen personnel from the Colorado National Guard and one dozen vehicles to help in the firefighting efforts."

Incident Command Spokesperson Justin Dombrowski said Wednesday morning that more crews will be rolling in throughout the day. The increase in resources is helping fire crews to slowly gain on the fire, he said.

Sampson said that economic impact of the Bircher Fire up to this point has not yet been assessed.

"A lot of times you don’t know until after everything is over and everybody starts assessing the actual cost of what the ramifications are. Sometimes you won’t know until the end of the summer," she said.

Sampson said that Montezuma County probably would not be eligible for Federal Emergency Manage-ment Agency relief funding.

"The requirement for private citizens to qualify for the low-interest loans that FEMA provides is that at least 25 primary structures have to have been destroyed in that county," said Simpson.

"In this case, since the fire is almost all on federal land, FEMA doesn’t even come into play," she said.

City Manager Hal Shepherd said that Cortez won’t be receiving monetary assistance from the government as Los Alamos did following their fire.

"This fire was not started by a federal agency — it began naturally — and the fire has not moved into town," Shepherd said.

Shepherd said that the city would have to investigate other channels for minimizing the economic impact to local small businesses.

"I am waiting for some information from the Small Business Administration Disaster Unit in Fort Worth, Texas, to find out what services they may have," said Shepherd.

The city manager said that it is possible that some Cortez business owners will be eligible for low-interest disaster loans through the SBA.

Merlyn Barnes, a public-information officer for the SBA, said that before residents and business owners are eligible for a low-interest loan, the Small Business Administration needs to receive an inquiry from the governor.

Once the inquiry has been submitted, homeowners can receive up to $200,000 in loans and business owners are eligible for up to $1.5 million, Barnes said.

Shepherd said, the city might also have to think about adjusting its advertising plan through the Umbrella Tourism Council.

"Cortez is becoming more and more of a jumping-off place for people visiting the many attractions around this area," Shepherd said.

There is more here than just Mesa Verde — especially with the recent Canyon of the Ancients designation — and businesses are going to have to start promoting that, he said.

A Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation team composed of 12 resource specialists from the National Park Service, BLM, Forest Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs joined firefighters and archaeologists at the Bircher Fire on Tuesday.

The BAER team will assess the more than 23,000 acres already burned by the Bircher Fire, and will eventually make recommendations for treatments to the area that will protect life and property, help control erosion and prevent floods

Hal Luedtke, an operations specialist for the fire on the BAER team, explained that all of the BAER members are card-carrying firefighters, but the team will begin its evaluations in areas that have already burned.

"We’ll start at the cold end of the fire, and work our way to the hot end," he said.

Once the team goes to work, it will have three days to prepare an initial report for the park of its recommendations for mitigation, according to park information specialist Will Morris.

"Their recommendations pretty much rule," he said. Funding to implement those recommendations will follow the report, Morris said.

BAER’s post-fire efforts will help stop the erosion that could damage previously undiscovered archaeological sites that are being unearthed by the Bircher Fire as it devours the vegetation above them.

Fire-trained archaeologists have been assigned to each of the 16 hand crews that are working diligently to create fire lines around the Bircher Fire.

Archaeologists are documenting the existence of sites that will need to be surveyed after the fire.

Julie Bell, an archaeologist for Mesa Verde, explained that the archaeologists are flagging areas where there is lithic scatter or evidence of trash middens, but that the hand crews move too quickly for the archaeologists to map or inventory the features. "We work with the hand-line scouts to redirect fire lines around the sites," she said.

Bell said that extreme measures would have to be used to preserve the archaeological sites from erosion after the fire. "Our big job will come when the fire’s out.

"The fire when it goes over a site does very little damage. It’s the erosion that will damage the sites."

A BAER team assessed the more than 4,000 acres burned at Mesa Verde during the 1996 Chapin 5 fire, which revealed roughly 400 archaeological sites.

Larry Wiese, superintendent of Mesa Verde National Park, had the courage to consider the positives in the midst of such a disaster. He says the fire and its charred wake can be a "new focus" for park visitors to experience in addition to the ruins, a kind of real-life, fire-science laboratory.

"There is a lot to learn from this, and we will be marketing it as another attraction," Wiese said.

Wiese said that once the park reopens, "It will be very dramatic for people who have been here before. From the boundary to the main cliff ruins we will be able to tell the story of fire and how it affects the environment."

He noted that all of the major sites in the park are still intact such as Cliff Palace, Balcony House, Spruce Tree and Long House, but that visitors driving up will clearly see the blackened remains caused by the Bircher Fire.

"Each story we tell, such as that of fire, will help to bring positive awareness to Mesa Verde," Weise said.

Staff Writer Jim Mimiaga contributed to this report.

Cortez evacuation plans and firefighting methods topped the list of concerns raised by the approximately 75 people gathered on Tuesday at Koko’s in Cortez for the first of several Bircher fire community forums.

After fire officials briefed the public, they were asked how long it took for firefighters to reach the blaze on Thursday and why bulldozers were not used in the initial attack.

Nancy Ames, acting park superintendent, replied that she knew very little about what initially happened. At 1 p.m. a trail-rehabilitation team was working at the Mancos Overlook when the crew saw smoke, she said.

They called in fire officials who made the decision to evacuate the park. By 1:30 a Type II fire management team had been ordered and at 1:45 the park was evacuated.

Officials did not confirm or deny whether bulldozers were prohibited by the National Park Service from digging a line around the fire on Mesa Verde property during its Thursday run from private to national-park land.

"We’re going to be studying and looking into that in great detail in the months ahead," said Forest Service District Ranger Mike Znerold. "And I hope there’s some lesson we can learn there."

Justin Dombrowski, spokesman for the incident management team, updated the crowd on the status of the fire and the chronology of its spread. He emphasized that the management team’s priorities are protecting the safety of firefighters, structures, and resources — in that order.

"We are not going to kill firefighters to save your home, or to save cliff dwellings," said Dombrowski.

This year alone, 10 firefighters have died in wildland fires across the country, Dombrowski said. So far firefighters have sustained only minor injuries — mostly from dehydration — in the Bircher fire.

Lt. Kalvin Boggs, representing the Montezuma County sheriff’s department, assured the crowd that although the fire had started down the northeast and west face of the mesa, it was no threat to the town of Cortez. Boggs estimated that eight or nine homes off of County Road H would be threatened if the fire moved further down the mesa.

There is a Cortez evacuation plan in place, but Boggs assured the crowd that the community has little to fear at this point.

Several people addressed the impact the fire could have on the local economy. Dale McFarland of Aramark, the concessionaire in Mesa Verde National Park, encouraged local business owners. He said that visitation to Yellowstone National Park tripled after its 1987 fire. "Depending on the way we handle this, we are going to be able to positively recover," he said.

Public meetings were held in Dolores and Mancos on Wednesday night. Two more are scheduled for Thursday, one at the Cortez City Council Chambers at 5:30 p.m., and another at the Durango High School at 7:30 p.m.

As if burning one-third of Mesa Verde National Park were not enough, the Bircher Fire has now spilled into the Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Park, threatening world-famous cultural ruins there.

Some 2,000 acres have burned in the northeast corner of the tribally owned and operated park, a remote area rife with tinder-dry fuels and burning fast thanks to gusty winds and practically inaccessible terrain, confirmed Mike Lohrey, incident commander for the Bircher fire.

"We feel certain that this corner’s (containment line) has moved. The very hazardous terrain in that area has not allowed us to get the resources there to deal with that portion of the fire," Lohrey said at a press conference Tuesday night. "The fire is moving towards the south."

Fire-break crews are being flown in to stay overnight at so called "spike camps" near the hot spot on tribal lands, and elsewhere, in an effort to fight the huge blaze with more efficiency. Swift, Water, Soda and White canyons are reportedly being affected by the fire. Tribal officials worry that it may reach nearby Ancestral Puebloan ruins, including the famous cliff dwelling Two-Story House.

"The fire has moved into the tribal park, and is especially threatening ruins in the Soda Canyon area," said Veronica Cuthair, director of the tribal park. "Our biggest concern is that it will jump the Mancos River and damage the ruins in Lyons Canyon. We have bulldozers sitting by to clear brush if a spot fire occurs there."

Cuthair said that already alcoves containing ruins at the lower portion of Soda Canyon, such as the Northern Shield and Sandal House ruins, are in immediate danger of being consumed by the fire.

"They sit lower in the canyon and are more susceptible," she said. "They told us that slurry bombers will be hitting that area today."

Other areas at risk on Ute lands are Moccasin Mesa and White Mesa, Cuthair said.

"These are elaborate ruins and we are hoping it hasn’t reached these sensitive areas, but what can we do? It is a very big concern," said Selwyn Whiteskunk, vice chairman of the Ute Mountain tribe.

Nowadays fire scientists use controlled burns to lessen forest-fuel loads that feed massive fires like this one, which has consumed some 23,000 acres in a mere seven days. Yet for 200 years previous, fire suppression was the policy rather than letting nature thin out deadfall and undergrowth via lightning-ignited fires.

"Our ancestors probably witnessed fires fairly frequently in this area," Whiteskunk said.

Cuthair emphasized that the tribal park is still giving half-day tours, but not in the area where the fire is. Strangely enough, she said, the fire has boosted visitation to the park.