Restoring Lost Pines will take years of toil, millions of dollars — and help from landowners

What used to be here, before September’s fires swept through Bastrop County and blackened Bastrop State Park, is a mature forest of pines and hardwoods thick with deer and songbirds and the whoosh of breezes through treetops. Then the Labor Day fires consumed it, leaving behind an eerily silent cemetery of trees turned to charcoal and ground stripped to bare dirt.

The Lost Pines Recovery Team recently finished writing a five-year plan for restoring the vegetation. Officials say it will take enormous amounts of money, planning and volunteer labor to help the forest fully recover.

Read more of our stories, see video and photos six months after the Labor Day wildfires

Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department firefighter Mizzy Zdroj is getting a new home courtesy of the ABC reality show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.”

Her home was destroyed in the Labor Day wildfires that burned hundreds of home in Central Texas.

When wildfires hit Central Texas, donors opened their wallets to help survivors by giving more than $3.8 million in cash.

The donations ended up mostly in the hands of six nonprofit organizations and church groups, led by the Austin Community Foundation with $1.2 million. The groups began distributing some of that money immediately after the fires began Labor Day weekend.

Read our previous wildfire coverage.

Photo by Ricardo B. Brazziell/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

In the face of a drought that is expected to last at least through winter, officials across the region are working on plans to prevent a repeat of the wildfires that ravaged about 1,700 homes in Bastrop, Travis and Williamson counties.

Officials hope that proposed rules that would keep dead brush from piling up, combined with safety campaigns to make homeowners more aware of risks, will tamp down the wildfire danger.

But more than two months after the devastating fires, many communities have yet to make big changes.

First came the men with the pickup trucks and the fliers, soliciting homeowners who were sifting through the rubble. On their heels came the scrappers, hunting for salvage metal. Then came the demolition crews, the tree crews, the dump trucks piled with concrete and brick, filling the blackened forest with the sounds of diesel engines and chain saws.

The spooky, post-wildfire quiet of the Lost Pines has been replaced with the buzz of a nascent recovery, as drifts of rubble and charred vehicles are scraped off lots to make way for new homes, or perhaps “for sale” signs. Businesses are flocking to Bastrop County to get a piece of the action, creating expectations for a boost during a sluggish economy — and some tension between homegrown businesses and the out-of-towners who are plopping temporary trailer-offices onto parking lots all over the community.

About 30 people live at Star Ranch, a family-oriented nudist club nestled in 112 acres of pine trees in Bastrop County.

Rod McClanahan, the club’s operations manager, said Star Ranch had the largest percentage increase of new members among all nudist clubs with permanent sites in the southwest last year, according to the American Association for Nude Recreation.

The Star Ranch membership is diverse, including veterans, state employees, Republicans and Democrats. Some hold Bible studies at the club. Others attend churches where the congregation speaks in tongues.

But they’re not swingers — a stereotype that dogs the family-oriented nudist community. Texas has its share of what are known as “hedonist” clubs, but Star Ranch has tried to cultivate a wholesome environment where parents can raise their children.

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Trees that came crashing into overhead power lines earlier this month probably caused the fire that has devoured more than 34,000 acres and 1,600 homes in Bastrop County, according to an investigation released by the Texas Forest Service on Tuesday.

The photo shows one of the points of origin of the fire.

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Photo by Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN