Don’t make any plans to visit Bastrop State Park at least until November. Texas Parks and Wildlife officials say the area will be closed to public so firefighters can extinguish hot spots and conduct damage assessments after a wildfire tore through most of the 6,500 acre park.
Another big job: cutting and mulching downed trees and left over timber that could serve as fuel for a future fire.
New satellite imagery shows less of the park was damaged than initially estimated.
“Initially, we though only about 100 acres of the park were left unburned, which would be 99 percent,” park superintendent Todd McClanahan said in a news release. “But the most recent satellite data shows only 95 percent coverage and the severity of that varies.”
KUT’s Mose Buchele toured Bastrop State Park today and took these photographs showing the fire damage.