The Crosho Fire cost an estimated $10.2 million to fight, but Routt County will pay only about $120,000 of what could have been over $5 million thanks to Colorado’s Wildfire Emergency Response Fund.

During a Sept. 4 joint Hayden Town Council and Routt County Commissioners meeting, County Manager Jay Harrington said the county would have been “on the hook” for over $5 million because over half of the fire burned on private land.

“It doesn’t matter where the fire starts,” Harrington said during the joint meeting. “It’s what it burns. So, the first two nights of that fire — which was mostly on federal land — burned through a million dollars a day on air support alone.”

However, because the county dedicates between $22,000 and $24,000 per year to the Colorado Wildfire Emergency Response Fund, the county will owe only about $120,000 of the $5 million for firefighting resources, according to DeMorat.

The state fund pools money from most counties in Colorado every year, acting as insurance in case a wildfire starts in an area that the local government would be responsible for.

The Crosho fire started around 4:30 p.m. Aug. 11 on federal land at Crosho Lake in Rio Blanco County, but local and federal fire crews from Yampa and Oak Creek were immediately sent to the scene.

Overnight, the fire grew to around 300 acres. Aerial resources were called in — including a Sky Hammer and two sky cranes — which used water from Crosho Lake and Allen Basin Reservoir for an initial attack.

Four Super Scoopers, or Canadair CL-415 aircraft, later arrived at the scene, dropping water from Stagecoach Reservoir on the blaze, as well as two Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System aircraft, two additional airtankers and one helitanker.

By the morning of Aug. 13, the fire had exploded to 1,700 acres. Nearly 200 fire personnel — including firefighters from the Forest Service, Steamboat Springs, Oak Creek and Yampa — were on the scene, and two evacuation zones were issued “Go” orders.

At that point, the Forest Service, state and county entered a cost-share agreement, and the federal agency “picked up the bill” for resources deployed on Aug. 13, said DeMorat.

After the fire started to burn private property in Routt County, the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control conducted a complexity analysis to determine if the intensity of the fire warranted funding from the Wildfire Emergency Response Fund.

Following the complexity analysis, the state and Forest Service “were picking up most of the tabs,” DeMorat said.

“As a part of that agreement, the county still has commitments,” he added. “So even though it’s state responsibility, the county has commitments to provide certain resources to include two Type 6 engines, a tender, a dozer, a grader, an incident command post and to manage all evacuations.”

The extra resources were provided by local fire districts like the Steamboat Springs Fire Protection District, who will ultimately be reimbursed by the county.

On Aug. 26, the fire reached 100% containment at 2,073 acres, with 60% of the fire covering private property to the north of Crosho Lake.

As the fire calmed down, fiscal responsibility was returned to the cost-sharing agreement between the county and the Forest Service.

According to DeMorat, the county has received state support from the Wildfire Emergency Response Fund four times in the past eight years: for the Mill Creek and Deep Creek fires in 2017, the Muddy Slide Fire in 2021 and now the Crosho Fire in 2025.

Over the past eight years, the county has dedicated about $165,000 to the state Wildfire Emergency Response Fund, according to DeMorat.

“With the Crosho Fire totaling about $10 million and more than 50% of that was on private property acres, if we did a strict cost-share with without the emergency fire fund and the state’s responsibility, that would be about a $6 million bill,” said DeMorat. “It’s been a real big benefit to Routt County.”