Volunteer and recent high school graduate Alex Caffery, center, helps local merchants wash mud off merchandise that was heavily damaged earlier this month in a flash flood in Manitou Springs. The town lies downstream of the vast swaths of scorched earth left behind by last year’s Waldo Canyon Fire, which makes the town highly prone to flash flooding.
Volunteer and recent high school graduate Alex Caffery, center, helps local merchants wash mud off merchandise that was heavily damaged earlier this month in a flash flood in Manitou Springs. The town lies downstream of the vast swaths of scorched earth left behind by last year’s Waldo Canyon Fire, which makes the town highly prone to flash flooding.Brennan Linsley/Associated Press file photo

The threat lingers years after the flames have been extinguished and the human and property losses of fire have been tallied.

Drenching rain in the wildfire-blackened hills below Colorado’s Pikes Peak sent a torrent of rock and mud into the tourist town of Manitou Springs this month, killing a 53-year-old man and smashing into dozens of houses.

No single agency compiles the cost of erosion and floods caused by wildfires, but the U.S. Forest Service spent nearly $46 million in fiscal 2012 on emergency erosion measures.

The money paid for mulch to absorb rain, shoring up roads and trails, and reseeding.