After the Aspen Acres fire charred more than 80,000 acres during its first week, Colorado Springs resident Dave Gendron with Team Rubicon started making phone calls to see how the disaster relief organization could help. 

The veteran-led organization is among several nonprofits that sent in teams to help residents clean up homes demolished by the fire that has consumed nearly 102,000 acres southwest of Pueblo and continues to burn along its southwestern edge in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest. 

Team Rubicon volunteers spent two nonconsecutive weeks in July organizing debris for pickup and taking down trees burned in the fire and now considered hazardous. The volunteers came from states such as California, Kansas, Wyoming and New Mexico to assist, said Gendron, who has worked with Team Rubicon for 11 years.

During their first week in mid-July, the Team Rubicon volunteers entered previously evacuated areas along with homeowners.

“If the property had been destroyed, typically what we would see is a concrete foundation with a metal roof collapsed on top of it,” he said. 

Usually, volunteers found the remains of metal goods, such as washers and dryers, microwaves and ovens. In cases where the fire burned especially hot, the volunteers found pools of molten metal, Gendron said.  

They were tasked with gathering debris by type, and so they gathered electronics, metal and concrete into separate piles. They were also directed to gather wooden objects, but they were rare.

“Almost without exception, there was no wood,” he said. 

The Team Rubicon volunteers helped homeowners who requested assistance through crisiscleanup.org and focused much of their efforts in Beulah, the hardest-hit community. Pueblo County promoted the website and has continued to spread the word, said Gayle Perez, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office. 

Prior to the Aspen Acres fire blowing up, Team Rubicon volunteers spent two weeks working on fire mitigation projects, including thinning trees in Mueller State Park, outside of Divide and removing vegetation around communication towers in Teller County.

“It makes it safer for the firefighters who try to defend those kinds of infrastructure facilities and also properties if that location has been hardened,” said Gendron, who was a longtime firefighter.

The nonprofit does a tremendous amount of fire mitigation across the West, Gendron said, to help prepare vulnerable communities.  

Across Southern Colorado, there are several thousand Team Rubicon volunteers who sign up to help during disasters nationwide.  

Across the whole nonprofit, about half are veterans, said Bill Blair, an Oregon resident who helped with the Aspen Acres fire. About 20% of Team Rubicon’s volunteers are former first responders, Gendron said.

Blair, a former soldier, served during the Vietnam War era and was inspired to volunteer after seeing an ad featuring Team Rubicon’s response to Hurricane Harvey in 2017.

“I really didn’t know I missed the Army until I joined Team Rubicon,” he said. 

A typical commitment to a disaster area is about eight days and at the end, volunteers have made lifelong friends, Blair said.

Public officials, community leaders and others interested in working with Team Rubicon on projects, such as fire mitigation, can contact the nonprofit’s headquarters at 310-640-8787. 

Residents who lost their homes to the Aspen Acres fire can also still request assistance from nonprofit volunteers if they need help cleaning up their properties by calling 970-283-7325 or visiting https://crisiscleanup.org/live 

As residents continue to clean up their properties, Pueblo County is allowing residents who do not have insurance to request a waiver of permit fees through its Building Division. Residents can reach the division at permits@pueblocounty.us or 719-583-6100.