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Smoke from the Aspen Acres shrouds Colorado City July, 5, 2026. Officals said firefighters have made progress in containing the blaze at 28%. (Mike Sweeney, Special to the Colorado Sun)

More: What to know about the bottled water advisory

Charissa Fryberger was one of the first Beulah Valley residents to see her community in person more than a week after the Aspen Acres fire swept over it in a rush of wind and flames. As part of a local water district, she spent Wednesday putting up notices instructing people to rely on bottled water once they are allowed to return to their homes.

Her team walked from plot to plot in the water district and counted about 70 homes that had burned down. It struck her that Colorado’s requirement to place notices on doors within 24 hours of a water safety problem weren’t designed for communities struck by wildfires. Sometimes, there were no doors left.

“It’s devastating,” said Fryberger, administrator for the Pine Drive Water District. “And it’s devastating in a small community where there’re not just a lot of burned houses. I can name the people who lived in those houses.”

Firefighting crews are still racing to contain several major fires in Colorado. Beulah, a small unincorporated community in Pueblo County, was fully surrounded by one of those: the human-caused Aspen Acres fire, which has burned over 97,000 acres near Pueblo, Colorado, destroyed over 250 homes as of Friday and caused the valley’s residents to be evacuated for more than 10 days. The Aspen Acres fire has also caused more damage to water systems than several other active fires — at least as far as emergency managers know so far.

For the small team at Pine Drive Water District, the trip to the valley to post advisories was part of the first phase of responding to the disaster. And the beginning of a long journey to make sure they have enough water in a year already complicated by drought.

“We have all these questions. We have all of these things that we know are potential issues,” Fryberger said. “The fact is, we don’t know where this is going yet. We are doing our best.”

One water district heads into “get things done mode”

The Beulah Valley is picturesque with a year-round community of 500 that doubles in the summer. This year, its water managers were already planning for water emergencies before the summer even started, Fryberger said.

Beulah residents rely on water supplies fed by four creeks in the hills around the valley. But after a record-dry winter that ended a month early, the water managers knew they’d be facing parched summer. The streams would shrink by midsummer. And more recent water rights would likely get cut off early under state law.

It had happened before. The creeks ran dry in July 2002, another major drought year. They used trucks to haul water into the community for two months, Fryberger said.

The water managers made a plan. The two major water systems in the valley, Beulah Water Works and the Pine Drive Water District, would work together to share their supplies, adjusting how they tapped rivers and when they’d lean on stored water.

Now, the Aspen Acres fire has cast even more uncertainty over the valley’s water supply.

The fire burned all four watersheds. The Pine Drive Water District team is still waiting to see what that will mean for their water supply as the summer continues. Summer storms often wash ash, fire retardant, chemicals and debris into waterways, clogging up pipes, damming creeks and worsening water quality.

“Fires have hit watersheds before. After those, we have dealt with flooding for several years as a result of the fire scars,” said. “What we’ve never done is burn all four watersheds, and at this point, we have burned basically all or part of all four of them.”

Beulah Water Works’ system escaped largely unscathed. But Pine Drive Water District took a blow.

The district takes water out of the North St. Charles River, treats it, uses pumps to move it uphill to tanks, then lets it flow down to residents’ houses.

The fire jumped Highway 78 at the district’s treatment plant and burned all around it, including over underground water tanks. It doesn’t look like the fire damaged the plant itself, Fryberger said.

The team visited more underground tanks, some of which were empty, and above-ground pipes uphill from the district’s plant. The district is still assessing potential damage to the exposed pipes. Some piping includes plastic materials that can become toxic if heated above certain temperatures, she said. They’re still not sure how hot it got.

The Pine Drive Water District samples around underground tanks and above-ground piping to assess damage from the Aspen Acres fire. (Pine Drive Water District, Contributed)

They passed homes that had completely burned to ash, leaving water taps exposed to air and draining the system, Fryberger said.

That’s part of the reason the district’s water users are on a bottled water notice. Water systems need to remain pressurized — if that doesn’t happen, germs and toxins can enter the system, creating public health concerns.

The district took samples and is waiting for results about the water quality, Fryberger said.

“We’re all trying to take care of what needs to be taken care of,” she said. “You just kind of switch to ‘get things done’ mode.”

In the best-case scenario, the infrastructure will be in good shape, so the district can begin cleaning, prepping and pressurizing the system. They’ll have to run super-chlorinated water through it for a while before they can deliver drinking water to homes, Fryberger said.

Once they receive findings from water samples, they’ll know more, Fryberger said.

“The plan for what we have to do will come from the state,” she said. “We can’t really begin the recovery process until the state gets the test results and tells us what they want us to do.”

No reports of water system damage from other fires so far

Water system damage is one of the ongoing impacts of wildfires that continue to rage in Colorado.

The Gold Mountain fire had burned over 33,100 acres near Ouray as of Friday morning. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis declared a disaster emergency June 28 for the fire, which allows more state agencies to help local emergency response teams.

The fire had not damaged pipes, treatment plants, irrigation ditches or other water systems in Ouray County as of Thursday, according to Jennifer Peterson, county spokesperson.

Some irrigators near the Gold Mountain Fire are more concerned about water deliveries next year, said Allen Distel, Bostwick Park Water Conservancy District’s general manager. The district sends water from Silver Jack Reservoir, just outside the current burn area, to about 50 users, mostly ranchers with livestock.

The district’s water deliveries haven’t been disrupted so far. But if this year’s monsoon season clogs up ditches and drainages with debris from the fire, it could cause problems next summer, he said.

The Ferris fire has burned over 62,900 acres in the San Juan National Forest, and Montezuma and Dolores counties. It caused road closures but no damage to reservoirs, ditches, treatment plants or other water systems, spokesperson Joe Zwierzchowski said.

Polis declared a disaster emergency in response to the Ferris fire Wednesday.

The Willow fire, which has burned more than 4,500 acres near Leadville, has also not damaged any water systems as far as response teams knew Thursday, spokesperson Ryan Scavo said.

Damage assessment teams are still surveying many burned areas and have yet to publicly release their findings.

For the Aspen Acres fire, responders don’t know of other system impacts but they’re keeping an eye on reservoirs in the burn area, like Lake Beckwith between Colorado City and Table Mountain, and the creeks that feed Beulah’s water supply, said Trysten Garcia, spokesperson for the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment.

“It is heavy to carry”

Fire crews are still fighting to contain the Aspen Acres fire, which was about 28% contained as of Friday.

For the residents of Beulah, evacuating because of fire is not a new thing, Fryberger said. They’ve done it before. Her children grew up knowing the drill for how to evacuate. This time, however, has lasted longer than the community expected.

“We’ve never seen anything like this. Never this magnitude. Never this speed,” Fryberger said. “It has now burned all the way around our valley entirely. For miles, all the way around it.”

Fryberger needs information that’s on her desk at home. People put tools in vehicles and parked them outside of the fire area, then the fire expanded. Others were dropped from their fire insurance policies and hadn’t replaced them before the fire started.

“The no-insurance stories are heartbreaking,” Fryberger said. “Everybody looked terrible the first couple of days, but people are kind of recovering and learning to joke and laugh about it a little bit.”

Fryberger said her house is still standing. The district’s board and staff have also suffered losses, their homes either damaged or fully destroyed. The district’s water operator, Quinn Bryant, has been working tirelessly even after losing his home.

“He’s checked the system. He’s done assessments,” Fryberger said. “He’s done everything he can do despite the fact that his house is a hole in the ground.”

The district’s board members and staff — all still evacuated — are looking for a spot in Pueblo where they can have their next board meeting to plan for the district’s next steps.

Fryberger is running into neighbors and community members, some of whom are staying at the same hotel as her. There are hugs and tears, but also gatherings for dinner and support online. In the past, the disasters have hit a small part of the community, she said. Everyone else could rally around them.

It’s harder when the whole community is hurting, Fryberger said.

“I was a little afraid to go to church Sunday because I knew if I just sat down to pray, it was going to hit me. I just sobbed all the way through church,” Fryberger said. “Most of the time, I’m fine, but it is heavy to carry.”

What to know about the bottled water advisory

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment issued a bottled water advisory Tuesday for those who use water from the Pine Drive Water District or the Signal Mountain Ranch Property Owners Water Company.

Once people can return to their homes, they will need bottled water for drinking, making ice and baby formula, brushing teeth, washing dishes and preparing food. Boiling tap water at home won’t cut it, the department said. Boiling may kill germs, but it will not remove potential fire-related chemicals or address other water quality concerns.

Private wells could have been impacted by fire, ash, debris, chemicals, the loss of pressure or damaged plumbing, CDPHE’s advisory said. Residents should use bottled water until they have their wells tested and know that it is safe to use them.

The United Way of Southern Colorado has a donation center and hub for picking up bottled water at 1591 Taos Road in Pueblo, Trysten Garcia, spokesperson for the Pueblo Department of Public Health and Environment, said.

If people need more information about how to get their water tested, they should contact the Pueblo health department or visit the department’s booth at the disaster assistance center at 29 Lehigh Ave. in Pueblo. More community resources and disaster response information are available at puebloemergency.info , he said.

Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Shannon Mullane writes about the Colorado River Basin and Western water issues for The Colorado Sun. She frequently covers water news related to Western tribes, Western Slope and Colorado with an eye on issues related to resource management, the environment and equity.

Born in East Tennessee, Shannon has been in Colorado for about a decade and...

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