Ern Mooney said the hardest part was looking around the living room at his family’s ranch in the Sweetwater area and deciding what to grab and what to leave.

Loading up his four horses and two dogs to evacuate on Wednesday? That was easy. He’d already done the same drill five years earlier when the Grizzly Creek Fire came within 4 miles of his property.

This time, with the Derby Fire creeping down the mountainside, Mooney wasn’t sure on Friday if his ranch would make it. He’s hopeful that firefighting crews working on the country’s top priority wildfire will be able to stop the flames from pushing south.  

But if it goes?

“We have some fine art,” Mooney said Friday morning while sitting with his horses at the livestock barn at the Eagle County Fairgrounds. “I put all my guns in a gun safe, so they should be fine. You kind of take the attitude of, you know, if it burns up, all this s— can be replaced.”

Jackie Schlegal’s family has been ranching in the area for over 100 years, though her cattle “at the moment really aren’t threatened.”

“So the only cattle that are threatened right now are the ones closest to Hack Lake and Turret Creek,” she said.

Schlegal said the ranchers in that area have been working to relocate the cattle, and were able to successfully clear one side of the hill on Wednesday. They were working on Friday to relocate the cattle “on the other side,” which had become threatened by the growing blaze. Schlegal said the ranchers have been mostly self-sustaining in moving the cattle out of the fire zone.

“Mostly the owners of the cows and other ranchers have volunteered to help,” she said.

Schlegal said since cattle behavior can be “unpredictable,” judgment calls on when close becomes too close are at the discretion of the ranchers, with no cues coming from the cows.

“I’ve seen them huddle together when a predator is threatening them. They will huddle and try to protect each other. But with the fire, I heard some cows got burned up over by Meeker. You know, they don’t run … they’re not that smart.”

Schlegal hopes that incoming precipitation will help ease both her and her neighbors’ concerns.

“I hope it starts raining, and we don’t have to worry about it anymore,” Schlegal said.

A tight community comes together

Mooney’s father, a doctor from Texas, bought the family ranch in 1953. He said homesteaders had been on the property as far back as the 1880s.

He called the last few days humbling — but he wasn’t referring to the thought of losing his ranch. Rather, he said, the outpouring of support is what has brought him close to tears at times.

“We have friends that have a condo in Eagle Ranch, and we’re staying with them,” he said. “Being around here and part of this community basically my whole life, it’s humbling, the number of people that have reached out. I’ve had at least two or three dozen people say, ‘Come stay with us, whatever you need.’ And that’s what this whole county is still like, this whole area is, whatever you need, we have trailers, trucks.”

Mooney said he offered the same help to neighbors in the area after getting his animals out, but that most had already left.

Eagle County officials estimate that between 200 and 400 residents have already been displaced by the Derby Fire. There are 459 structures identified as threatened based on a model that predicts worst-case scenario fire spread. Most of those structures are homes in the Sweetwater Canyon area, as well as along Colorado River Road and ranches spread across the Derby Mesa area.

More room at the county barn

At the livestock barn at the fairgrounds, there was still plenty of room for displaced animals if the fire continues to force evacuations. As of Friday morning, 15 horses, 19 goats, 58 chickens, two calves, two rabbits and nine turkeys were being housed at the facility, but fewer than half of the 48 stalls were full.

Marc Wentworth, who recently retired as the director of the Vail Public Safety Communications Center, was working with his wife, Glenda, the director of the Colorado State University Extension in Eagle County, to help check animals into the facility.

Marc Wentworth, like Mooney, said ranchers in the area are pretty resourceful, but that Eagle County and the CSU Extension were there to help “take care of people that have a need right now.”

“There’s a few that have trailers that they’re in at the campground over here, and there’s some that are staying with friends or friends have homes that they’re not living in right now,” Marc Wentworth said. “I haven’t really heard of anybody that’s not got a place to stay.”

.”We’re pretty self-sufficient. We don’t really need any help,” Mooney said. “The Grizzly Creek Fire taught us. We loaded our horses, brought what we needed. I loaded enough hay for a week. Lloyd Gerard is a good friend of mine, and he just delivered a couple of big round bales that he donated. And the county donated shavings to put in these stalls. They welcomed us with open arms.”

Mooney said folks in the Sweetwater community have been staying in contact on their phones. He praised his neighbor, Derrick Wiemer, who lives just a little over a quarter of a mile above him, for continuing to take videos of the fire’s movement. A number of Wiemer’s videos have gone viral on local social media pages.

“All the videos are of my place,” Mooney said. “So without him, I wouldn’t know what the hell was going on.”