Face masks will be required in all indoor public settings in Pitkin County for everyone 2 years old and older regardless of vaccination status beginning Thursday, county public health authorities said Wednesday.

Businesses or facilities that choose to implement a mandatory vaccination policy for employees and guests can receive an exemption to the indoor mask order if approved as a fully vaccinated facility by the Pitkin County Public Health Department.

The order, which goes into effect at 12:01 a.m Thursday, does not apply to private homes.

“By adopting an indoor mask order now, we can preserve our health care system resources, protect the health of our community and have the best chance at preventing hugely impactful capacity and social distancing restrictions in the future,” Jordana Sabella, county public health director, said in a news release.

For those who might view the mask mandate — coming after the JAS Labor Day concerts in Snowmass and the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen — as punishing locals now that the tourists have mostly gone, Pitkin County Manager Jon Peacock pointed out that officials have been “telegraphing” the possibility of a mask mandate since mid-summer.

“Masks are not punishment,” he said in a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “They’re protection. They’re mandates in place to protect our local community. It starts with a mask.”

During its monthly meeting last week, the Pitkin County Board of Health directed Sabella to draft an indoor mask order for public spaces by this week if COVID-19 case counts didn’t decrease. They have not, and in fact have increased in the past seven days.

“We didn’t expect … anything precipitous to change,” Dave Ressler, Aspen Valley Hospital CEO, said Wednesday at the media briefing. “We haven’t seen a significant change.”

Pitkin County’s incidence rate hit 298 per 100,000 people on Monday — nearly three times the transmission rate the Centers for Disease Control considers “high” and the highest so far of the delta wave of cases, according to online Pitkin County COVID-19 statistics dashboards. The rate was back down to 276 Tuesday, though that equals the highest rate in the past two weeks.

The county has has 61 new cases of COVID-19 in the past seven days, which included 49 residents and 12 out of county cases, according to the online dashboards. The daily number of new cases in the county has hovered between about 40 and 50 for residents in the past two weeks, while the number of out of county cases has stayed roughly between 10 and 15 per day during the same time period.

The latest COVID-19-related death occurred over the weekend at Aspen Valley Hospital, when an elderly, fully vaccinated person died, sources have said. A total of five Pitkin County residents have died form the virus since the pandemic began in March 2020.

Despite the death of a fully vaccinated person, public health officials continued to urge people to get the vaccines, which they stress offer the best protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death.

The health board’s action a week ago also came on the heels of AVH deciding to move from “comfortable” to “cautious” for the first time in months. As of Wednesday, the cautious designation remained in place, with between six and 10 essential health care workers out with COVID-like symptoms, between six and 10 average daily visits by COVID patients and 25% to 50% inpatient hospital capacity and transfer capacity.

Public health and AVH officials decided to remain at the cautious level during a meeting Wednesday, Sabella and Ressler said. A main part of that decision was the fact that it’s becoming harder to transfer COVID-19 patients who need a higher level of care to hospitals in Denver and Grand Junction, Sabella said.

As of Friday, just 12% of ICU beds were available across the state, Ressler said.

“Clearly, capacity issues at a system level are significant,” he said, noting that though AVH was able to transfer a patient this weekend he remained worried about those capacity issues.

On Wednesday, one of AVH’s four ICU beds was occupied by a COVID-19 patient, while another was occupied by a non-COVID patient, Ressler said.

The CDC has recommended universal indoor masking since July 27, when it warned that the COVID-19 delta variant was twice as contagious as the alpha variant. Pitkin County Public Health officials seconded that advice, though indoor mask wearing was spotty at best in Aspen and throughout the county and state.

Pitkin County becomes the fourth county in Colorado to implement an indoor mask mandate, behind Boulder, San Juan and San Miguel counties, after Gov. Jared Polis lifted a statewide indoor mask mandate in May.

In Pitkin County, the new order will require masks indoors during periods of high and substantial transmission. Once the rate drops to moderate or low levels for 21 consecutive days, the mask requirement will automatically return to a recommendation. Should cases rise to substantial or high transmission levels again for five consecutive days, the mask requirement again would go back into effect until the transmission level drops again, according to the news release.

High transmission means an incidence rate of 100 or more cases per 100,000 population, while substantial transmission is considered to be occurring when the rate lands between 50 and 99 cases, according to CDC guidelines. Moderate transmission is defined as an incidence rate of between 10 and 49 cases, and low transmission occurs when 10 or fewer cases per 100,000 population are detected.

Masks will be required on public transportation, in public and private offices, retail stores, restaurants, bars, event centers, gyms, recreations centers and any other indoor space that allows the general public, the county said. Masks are not required anywhere outdoors.

“Public Health also recommends that businesses and facilities move activities outdoors whenever possible, or increase ventilation by opening windows and doors, running the HVAC or installing portable air filters,” the release states. “Only second to vaccination, adoption of an indoor mask order is an extremely effective tool to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and set a universal expectation for mask wearing throughout the community.”

Businesses and facilities that want to implement a mandatory vaccination policy for employees and guests or customers so indoor masks are not required can begin applying to the Pitkin County Public Health Department on Oct. 11. Further details are pending.

“This is a voluntary program that allows businesses to develop their own policies to encourage and require vaccinations while meeting their specific demographic, community and business needs,” according to the release. “All businesses must receive explicit approval as an Approved Fully Vaccinated Facility by Pitkin County Public Health.”

At Wednesday’s media briefing, Sabella said the Public Health Department would not be collecting vaccine information for employees of businesses that apply for the program. They will, however, look for a detailed policy on how that information is being communicated, collected and safely stored, she said. Sabella suggested businesses consult with legal counsel to come up with the best individual plan.

Exact criteria about the program will be posted on Pitkin County’s COVID-19 website in the coming weeks, she said. Businesses will be able to apply for the program online.

Businesses or facilities that already require guests and employees to provide proof of vaccination and plan to continue that policy can contact communityliaison@pitkincounty.com to obtain an exception to the mask order.

Further information about the mask order can be found at covid19.pitkincounty.com/mask-recommendations/#details.

An Aspen business’s refusal to test a person for COVID-19 because of her outspoken views on the coronavirus has touched off both praise and condemnation for the decision.

On Wednesday evening, conservative commentator Candace Owens went public to her 7 million combined followers on Twitter and Instagram with an email from Aspen COVID Testing co-owner Suzanna Lee. The email noted the business would not test Owens due to her stances on the virus.

A well-known conservative commentator and political activist and a best-selling author, Owens, in an interview Thursday morning with The Aspen Times, said she ended up being tested by a physician, and the result was negative.

Staff for Owens had registered her to be tested at the Hyman Avenue facility while she is in Aspen this week on a business vacation with her husband and baby boy. Lee, however, emailed back that they would not be accepting Owens’ business due to her influential platform. Owens is strongly against getting vaccinated and doesn’t wear a mask.

“We cannot support anyone who has pro-actively worked to make this pandemic worse by spreading misinformation, politicizing and DISCOURAGING the wearing of masks and actively dissuading people from receiving life-saving vaccinations,” said Lee’s email to Owens, which was dated Aug. 31.

Lee’s suggested Owens could be tested at kiosk behind Aspen City Hall.

“My team and myself have worked overtime, to exhaustion, unpaid and underpaid this past year, spending our own capital to ensure that our community remains protected. It would be unfair to them and to the sacrifices we have all made this year to serve you.”

Lee and her business partner, Isaac Flanagan, stood by the email’s remarks on Thursday evening in an interview with The Aspen Times. Had Owens shown symptoms or was “a potential risk to the community,” they would have tested her, but not in a “non-emergency scenario for someone working proactively to undermine the realities of this devastating pandemic,” Flanagan said.

Owens also had sought the test through the company’s concierge service, they said.

“We stand behind our staff and we’re not sending them to someone’s hotel room when they don’t feel safe,” Lee told The Times.

In a telephone interview, Owens said a private company has every right to turn away business. But in this instance, against the backdrop of public health, she questioned the call.

“She is a private business owner,” Owens said. “She does have a right to decline to give me service, and that’s not what the issue is here. I want that to be very clear. Assuming that she has not accepted any state or federal funding, assuming that she truly is a private-business owner, then she has every right to discriminate against who she serves. But it should be noted that she was seeking to prevent me from keeping the Aspen community safe.”

Just finished my live on Instagram here: https://t.co/lPjhqVYaGO

As promised— here is the email from the rabid activist declining to give me a test, plus my response to her. She clearly isn’t stable enough to work in health and is a danger to the Aspen community. pic.twitter.com/nV7xMGqVN3

— Candace Owens (@RealCandaceO) September 2, 2021

Lee and Flanagan said their testing business is strictly private and hasn’t received any public dollars at the local, state or federal levels. Pitkin County Manager Jon Peacock confirmed Aspen COVID Testing receives no local or state funding.

“We feel unbelievably good about what we do,” Flanagan said. “We do not discriminate, and we do not pick and choose who we do and don’t test. Our patients come from every walk of life and every political affiliation.”

Owens, however, said the letter sent the message that keeping the community safe is tied to politics.

“And in this particular regard, irrespective of what you think about my stance on vaccinations, I’m following COVID measures in Aspen,” she said. “I’m following COVID measures when I go to venues, when I go to events. I’m listening to what people want done. So if her goal is to keep the Aspen community safe … shouldn’t you say this a good thing that unvaccinated people are at least being responsible to make sure that they’re not spreading the virus?”

Lee said she was immersed all day in “crisis management.” She had to hire extra phone operators to field calls from people upset with her decision.

“It’s been horrible,” she said. “My inbox has been inundated with nasty, horrible messages.”

She said had to contact police because she was feeling threatened.

Assistant Police Chief Bill Linn said there “an active investigation going on” but he declined to go into specifics.

“I can say our No. 1 concern is overall public safety, so we are just being attentive to what’s going on over there,” he said. “We have a case number and we are actively keeping an eye on the developments in that situation.”

Owens said she regularly gets tested because she travels often, but her experience in Aspen was a first.

“Never,” she said. “I’ve been tested from Croatia to London. This has never happened. Ever. Actually, you would think health care would be free from politics. And actually what’s she doing is actually giving us fire and fuel, and when I say ‘us,’ I’m talking about us who feel that this virus has been politicized. You’re proving that it’s politicized. … This should have been, ‘OK, I hate you, Candace, but I’m glad you are at least doing the right thing and making sure that your are keeping the community and ensuring you don’t have COVID.'”

Last week, Owens posted on Twitter: “If you do not understand that there is something purely evil involved right now in terms of these vaccines you will never understand. It will NEVER enter my arm.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert, the Republican who represents Aspen as part of Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, also chimed in Thursday morning tweeting: “It’s a shame to see this in Colorado in this day and age. Denying Candace a COVID test because she’s a conservative? The Left just goes lower and lower every single day.”

Lee had plenty of supporters on social media. Among the accolades were:

— “Just beautiful. I nominate Suzanna Lee for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”

— “Suzanna Lee is an American hero.”

— “Oh wow, this is fabulous. Go Suzanna Lee!!! Amen, girl! Your business, your choice! Candace — head to the kiosk in the alley for your test Face with tears of joy you guys seem to think you’re above the ‘actions have consequences’ rule, you’re not… at all…”

— “Well, well, well. So now the lady that called Covid a scam and basically ridiculed the entire safely protocols, got shut down for a covid test by a private owned lab run by Suzanna Lee.”

— “Aspen is cheering on Suzanna Lee!”

Fire crews worked a small wildland fire Friday in the Roaring Fork Valley near the Lazy Glen community and should have it completely out by Saturday evening, a fire official said Friday night.

The fire is on Bureau of Land Management property and is not easily accessible. A U.S. Forest Service ground crew is on scene but is waiting for weather to pass before they go back up Friday night, Jim Genung, fire management officer with the Upper Colorado River Interagency Fire Management Unit, said about 6 p.m.

He said a lightning strike Thursday night in the area is the cause of the fire, but they could not find it when they went up in the evening. He said the fire “kicked up with the winds” that came through Friday afternoon. It has burned about a half-acre but was “taking on a good rain right now,” Genung said.

When the weather clears the ground crew will return to the burn area, and another team will join Saturday and there should be 10-12 federal firefighters on the scene, he said.

“Weather permitting, we should have it buttoned by (Saturday) evening,” Genung said.

Roaring Fork Fire Rescue Chief Scott Thompson said earlier Friday the fire is to the north of the Lazy Glen community (near mile marker 26 on Highway 82), a few hundred yards up the hill and burning in pinon and juniper trees. He said no structures are threatened and there are no evacuations.

“We’ve used two small air tankers and they’ve boxed it in, but the fire is going to be visible tonight and most of tomorrow depending on how much moisture we get,” Thompson said from the scene. “If you’re driving up Holland Hills and Lazy Glen, it’s in your face.”

Genung said the two single-engine air tankers were able to each make two drops and form a box around the fire.

The lightning that moved through with Thursday night’s storms caused four or five fires in the region, Genung said. He said crews worked Friday morning on a small fire west of the Grizzly Creek burn scar, and then other small fires in western Garfield County and on BLM land.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

9 p.m. update: As if on cue, a good, wetting rain fell on Eagle and the Sylvan Fire on Thursday night around 7 p.m. Scattered rain showers, cooler temperatures and cloud cover on Thursday provided the 200 personnel working the Sylvan Fire with an assist as the fire’s growth slowed considerably.

A Type 1 Incident Management Team took over management of the fire on Thursday morning.

“The weather has been helping us,” said David Boyd, public affairs officer for the White River National Forest. The Rocky Mountain Type 1 Incident Management Team brings more resources and more capacity to tackle the fire, which was still burning on 3,752 acres as of 9 p.m. Thursday night, or nearly 5.86 square miles.

According to Operations Section Chief Rob Powell in a Facebook Live update Thursday morning, 200 people have now been assigned to the fire with more coming in as well as four helicopters.

However, resources, both nationally and regionally, are stretched thin though according to Powell.

“Resources nationally, even though it’s still June, are extremely short,” Powell said. “Most of our hotshot crews in the region, all of them are assigned to fires in our region. Aircraft is short. This is something we’ll have to deal with throughout the summer.”

The fire began on Sunday afternoon and quickly escalated to the level of a wildland blaze which warrants the large capacity available from a Type 1 team.

“The Type 1 team, they kinda come in with their own city,” Sheriff James van Beek said on Wednesday evening, during a community briefing. “Watch out for the trucks, keep the kids away, there’s going to be a lot of extra traffic moving, so we’re asking everyone to be extremely cautious.”

Aided by weather

With the cooler weather here to stay for the next few days, Boyd said it will allow the teams to begin working on the “critical pieces” of the fire and fight “right up against what’s burning.”

This includes the area where the fire burned down to Sylvan Lake on Tuesday as well as the extreme south side where the crews will attempt to keep the fire from the Frying Pan drainage area.

The weather has allowed crews to moderate the fire activity where it crossed the Forest Road 400 (West Brush Creek Road) near Crooked Creek Pass.

Crews were able to construct direct fireline around the 20-30 acres that crossed FSR 400 (West Brush Creek Road) on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, as well as the approximate 100 acres that crossed the powerline road and burned to Sylvan Lake on Tuesday, Boyd said.

Thursday, crews strengthened these lines along the road.

With this weather expected to continue over the next few days, the crews will be doing all they can to “box it in,” Boyd said.

This includes finding places where the crews can hold the fire, using existing roads and natural features — such as meadows and rocky slopes — as firelines.

Boyd was careful to note that after these cooler days, the area is expecting hotter and dryer days, bringing about more fire activity and more smoke. “This will take time,” he said. “This fire is going to be here for a while as we’re boxing it in, there’s a lot of timber that will still burn.”

Powell echoed this sentiment on Thursday morning, expecting success over the next few days while remaining cautious about the fire.

“
It’s not normal what we’re seeing any more,” Powell said, referring to the increasing wildfire danger over the past few years. “We have to plan for a bigger event; we’re taking advantage of the weather and the resources we have to engage the fire direct, but also looking at farther out options to get established.”

Coming together

As with all Eagle County emergencies, the community is coming together to support the first responders fighting the Sylvan Fire.

The Eagle Valley Community Foundation is currently rallying resources, including food, for the firefighters as they continue to arrive in Eagle County. As part of its Community Market program, the foundation is supplying snacks and meals for the fighters with the help of local restaurants and the local MIRA bus.

For Friday morning, Grand Avenue Grill is preparing 400 servings of eggs, bacon, fruit and waffles for the firefighters.

The foundation is also putting together a relief fund for the firefighters to help them get the resources they need. Donations can be made at eaglevalleycf.org.

According to Powell, the firefighting crews are setting up an operating base just north of Sylvan Lake. This is where many of the meals will be delivered to the crews.

The local Red Cross and Salvation Army are also helping to provide support right now.

Dan Smith, with the Vail Valley Salvation Army, has been on the scene since Sunday in his 4-wheel drive canteen set-up, providing meals on site for the firefighters. Since Sunday, Smith, with the help of 20 volunteers throughout the week, has served 2,015 meals — which is already about half of the number of meals the canteen served all of last year during emergencies.

“It’s an art form,” Smith said. “They’ve had a terrible day and we like to be a highlight.”

Friday, Smith and his canteen will be clearing out to allow for other community organizations to provide meals. However, you can continue to support the Vail Valley Salvation Army as they provide require volunteers and resources for future efforts with the fire. Smith also noted that the local Salvation Army is always looking for large commercial kitchens to provide meals during emergencies.

For more information on how to support or volunteer to help the local Salvation Army, call 970-748-0704.

All the info you need

There is a new Facebook page, Sylvan Fire Information, where updates will be provided.

A virtual community meeting will be held on the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page at 6 p.m. Friday.

A pre-evacuation order has been issued for Gypsum Creek Road past mile marker 6, Frost Creek, Salt Creek and Bruce Creek.

People in these areas may be asked to evacuate if the fire worsens.

Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued for the areas of Hat Creek, Yeoman State Park, and Fulford.

Those who have immediate needs for relocating livestock should call 970-379-7731. Now is the time to prepare to leave and consider precautionary movement of those with special needs, mobile property and large animals.

Eagle Valley High School in Gypsum may be used as an evacuation center. Both Eagle Valley Middle and Eagle Valley Elementary have been offered up as staging and camp areas for the Forest Service and firefighters.

Hardscrabble Road is completely closed, and the town of Eagle has posted information about fire-related trail closures at TownOfEagle.org/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=519.

The White River National Forest will enter Stage 2 fire restrictions on Friday.

For the latest information about pre-evacuation or evacuation notices, visit ECEmergency.org for Eagle County and PitkinCounty.com for Pitkin County.

The latest information, including a map of the closure when it is available, will be posted at inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/7562.

For more information about wildfire smoke visit EPA.gov/smoke-ready-toolbox-wildfires.

Nate Peterson and John LaConte contributed reporting.

Fire crews are responding to a wildland fire that started Friday just after 5 p.m. likely from a lightning strike off Highway 82 near Old Snowmass.

Piktin County officials sent an alert about the fire at 5:40 p.m. A helicopter arrived about 6:05 p.m., according to a people in the area, and the first water drop on the fire came at 6:57 p.m.

Julie Royer Manning lives right below the hillside where the fire started and said she heard a loud clap of thunder at 5:05 p.m. and then saw smoke. She said it was not raining at the time.

“I heard this loud boom and it made my dogs jump,” she said when reached at 6 p.m. “It was like a bomb went off.”

She said she was watching as “big, orange flames” were starting to grow on the hillside.

Royer Manning said the helicopter was pulling water from a large man-made pond her neighbors put in just recently.

Lower River Road reopened about 7:15 p.m. after it was closed at Gerbaz and Snowmass Canyon as crews respond to the area. People are asked to stay away from the road if they can and only call 911 if they have an unrelated emergency and not about the fire.

With the heightened concern about human-caused fires, officials in the Roaring Fork Valley and other parts of western Colorado this week have enacted Stage 1 fire restrictions.

A red flag warning is in effect from noon to 9 p.m. Saturday for all of western Colorado and eastern Utah as forecasters at the National Weather Service are calling for scattered thunderstorms with lightning and wind gusts up to 35 mph through Sunday. Temperatures are expect to drop a few degrees this weekend but not for long.

“Conditions may be favorable for easy ignition and rapid spread of fires due to lightning from thunderstorms on Saturday afternoon and low (humidity) and strong gusts on Sunday,” according to the weather service. “Otherwise, dry conditions are expected for much of the new week.”

This is a developing story that will be updated.

Officials have suspended search efforts Friday night for a kayaker who is missing after going into a treacherous section of the Crystal River on Thursday night, an official said Friday evening.

The 41-year-old man — a member of Mountain Rescue Aspen — entered a difficult section of the river called the “Meatgrinder” near the first Highway 133 entrance to Redstone around 8 p.m. Thursday, was pulled under the water and not seen again, Pitkin County Sheriff Joe DiSalvo said Friday morning.

The man was kayaking with two others at the time and “was released from his kayak,” the Sheriff’s Office said in an update Friday night.

The swift-water search and recovery was conducted all day Friday by crews from the Carbondale and Rural Fire Protection District and the Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office. Crews used drones Friday to search downstream from the area where he disappeared, he said. They looked from the section north of Redstone down river to the Penny Hot Springs.

“I really think it is far too dangerous to go in (to that section of river Friday morning) and look for him,” DiSalvo said.

By Friday afternoon, crews searching from the riverbank had recovered the man’s boat, though his body had not yet been found, the sheriff said. Authorities were notifying the man’s next of kin Friday and have not yet released his name.

Crews were hoping the water might go down in the late afternoon and provide an opportunity to better scout the rapid for the man’s body, DiSalvo said. The sheriff said just before 6 p.m. that operations were called off for the night and they “will reassess in the morning” the situation and changing conditions.

The Meatgrinder is “fast-paced, stout, and full of sieves and undercuts,” according to the nonprofit river group American Whitewater. The section can be a “high-consequence run” and is known to have a large amount of wood that gets caught on the rocks, according to the group’s online description.

The river was running at about 800 cubic feet per second Thursday night around 8 p.m. and rising, according to the water station operated by the U.S. Geological Survey located just downriver of the Meatgrinder. The river usually flows between 500 and 1,100 Cfs, according to the American Whitewater group, which also says the section of the Crystal “picks up really quick with more flow.”

The Sheriff’s Office update Friday night said the river is running “high and heavy. Conditions in and around the river are dangerous to the public and rescue personnel.”

“From what I understand, this is a pretty dangerous area of rapids on the Crystal,” Jenny Cutright, spokeswoman for Carbondale Fire, said Friday.

DiSalvo also warned boaters to be very cautious in the area of the Meatgrinder.

“All river users have to be very careful of that section of river this time of year,” he said. “It’s a very dangerous section of river.”