LONGMONT, Colo — News from the Boulder Office of Emergency Management has brought some relief for those impacted by the Stone Canyon Fire. The office announced Thursday afternoon that many of the evacuation zones have been lifted.
The fire killed one person and damaged at least five structures. The Stone Canyon neighborhood and the Steamboat Valley area have both received the all clear.
The fire started north of Lyons on Tuesday and has burned roughly 1,553 acres but firefighters have 20% containment.
On Thursday afternoon, employees at the Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center returned for the first time since they were forced to evacuate roughly 600 animals.
“Oh my goodness gracious! I was running around the building and I was like, "You don’t know how fast my heart is beating right now,” said Mysti Tatro, the community relations manager at the Greenwood Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. “Just seeing the plumes of smoke off into the distance was scary.”
Tatro and rest of the employees at the center implemented a disaster plan they created a few months ago.
“It was kind of madness going on. Everyone had their vehicles open, they were putting animals in their trunks and grabbing medications off the wall,” Tatro explained. “[The animals are] already going through the ringer and have a lot that their bodies are going through. It’s really hard to put them through stress like this, especially as warranted as it is.”
Tatro said many of the animals were placed with independent rehabilitators, people who are licensed to rehabilitate animals in their homes. On Tuesday, some of the animals began to return to Greenwood. Tatro said many of them were stressed due to the change in environment.
Some of the first animals to be returned were the rabbits. Tatro said they are easily stressed and needed to return to a calm and quiet environment.
“They’re finally back in the [air conditioning] in their home bin. They have their little hutch to hide in, and plenty of fresh grass and kale. They’re looking way less stress than they were yesterday,” she said inside what they call the "bunny hotel." “We’re not putting cucumber masks on their eyes, but it’s pretty much the same thing.”
In the midst of the evacuation on Tuesday afternoon, a rescuer brought in another animal: a marmot. The employees were initially going to ask the rescuer to bring it to another center until they saw its condition.
“We saw it with a huge peanut butter [jar] stuck to its neck. It’s head was completely in it,” Tatro added. “We’re like, 'Okay, we’ll have to get it off as soon as we can.' So we drove off to our wildfire staging area, and right then and there one of the rehabilitators cut it off and made sure it didn’t have any major injuries.”
The marmot is expected to be okay and many other animals thanks to the employees swift thinking. Tatro said the team was able to evacuate all of the animals in a matter of 48 minutes.
“It’s a lot going through me emotion wise,” she admitted.
The center started returning the animals Thursday morning. They expect the transfer back to take a while and hope to start accepting new rescues in the coming days.
In the interim, they are fundraising for resources to help the animals while some are still in temporary housing.