🙀🔥 Fear of Fire: Re-thinking wildfires
Fighting back the flame with some important fire knowledge
Welcome back to Burning Questions.
In this edition, you’ll hear from another group of five students in a current Colorado College class called “Reporting on Wildfires,” where we’ve had the chance to learn from experts here in Colorado about our growing fire problem. This is our third week of the class, and these are the topics we chose to tackle.
🔮Demystifying the flame: What is a ‘Red Card’?
I’m Olivia Xerras, an international political economy major and journalism minor here to kick off this edition with some preliminary knowledge about fire.
Many people learn early on not to play with fire.
Whether the scene was lighting candles in church on a Sunday, dealing with fireworks on the Fourth of July, or sitting by a fire pit making s’mores, fire might have had an instinctually negative connotation.
Until taking this class, I firmly believed that for the most part fire was a dangerous thing. I believed that fire was a nuisance to the environment, for humans to be around, and ultimately a scary topic to even discuss. So learning about the positives of some fires that erupt in the United States such as prescribed burns or lightning that sparks low-burning fires that clear out undergrowth and promote healthier ecosystems, was a surprise.
In the 2017 book Megafire by Boulder-based journalist and author Michael Kodas, his chapter “The Vanishing Forest” brings a unique perspective of scientists and key researchers who study climate change and speak about wildfire prone areas that have shifted massively over time.
“For at least 6,000 years, frequent, low-intensity ground fires shaped the landscape — keeping forests thinned and preventing timber from overtaking grasslands,” Craig Allen, the science and education director for the Valles Caldera National Preserve, says in the book.
But to what extent does the general public actually know this information?
The news cycles, PR campaigns, and Smokey Bear infomercials have proven to be contributors to instilling a belief that fire is something to fear, according to an article by Kyle Swenson in The Washington Post.
Without knowledge of what is natural, necessary, or what isn’t, it might be tricky for the general public to distinguish the difference.
This got me thinking about how those in professions beyond fire fighting, or taking the current college class I’m in, might gain more insight into fire behavior and other aspects of the sometimes fearful flame.
One way is to obtain a so-called red card, a certification required for firefighters to have if they wish to work on a fire line.
During a recent talk to our class, prolific wildfire photojournalist Helen H. Richardson of The Denver Post spoke about the process of acquiring a red card, offering people who might not actually want to fight fires to gain confidence from the training to better navigate a wildfire as a member of the press. Our professor, Corey Hutchins, also went through the certification process of becoming a wildland firefighter to better inform his own knowledge for this class.
The National Wildfire Coordinating Group manages the required training, experience and physical fitness standards for all firefighters or individuals attempting to obtain this card.
Based on the U.S. government-affiliated Indian Affairs website, all first-year firefighters must complete 32 hours of classroom and online training that prepares trainees for the upcoming physical and mental checkpoints.
Following this four-day classroom training, agencies require a “pack test.”
The work capacity test, or pack test, is used to pass individuals for the three levels of wildland firefighting duty that range in time-span, physical endurance, and weight of the pack on their backs.
With this in mind, going through the process of certification and the knowledge that comes with the physical achievement might be something to consider for those interested in better understanding wildfire or learning to better communicate about it.
On a recent trip to the Centennial Airport to visit firefighting aircraft, Dave Potts and Bobby Ryan of the Multimission Aircraft Team spoke to our class in an empty hangar about the need for more individuals and journalists to learn about fire beyond precautionary measures.
They suggested attending wildfire academies, some of which are offered in Colorado Springs, might be something to consider.
Knowing that a select number of individuals willingly put themselves through such a process to better prepare them for emergency events shows the depth in knowledge available for those who wish to attain it.
The best way to get over fear is knowledge — and knowledge of this topic can certainly instill confidence for those who might still be skeptical of this frequently misinterpreted topic of fire.
👩⚕️What is a prescribed burn, and what type of doctor can write a script?
I’m Max Landy, a design major writing about controversy surrounding prescribed fires.
For thousands of years, native peoples have been working with prescribed burns to assist with hunting practices and agricultural stability. They saw and used fire as a resource and natural process that was essential for their survival. Now, for some, it has become a villain, one which we snuff out at every possible opportunity.
How and when did this change occur?
As colonialism spread across North America pushing native peoples off of their land, the traditions of those native people began to fade. Instead we were introduced to a certain ranger-hat-wearing bear with an iconic slogan, attempting to do neurosurgery on our forests with chainsaws and mass amounts of retardant.
This approach is the opposite of what nature sometimes needs. In years past, forests within Colorado tended to burn every 20 years, burning excess fuel, and leaving the forest with healthy levels of nutrients and clearing of parasites. As noted in Megafire, a century of war against natural fires has exacerbated this issue to a point where forests have excess fuel that if we were to burn off would take 90 years given our current rate of prescribed burns.
For many, burning this much land is a terrifying concept. Take the story of Paula Elofson-Gardine in Megafire, for example. She’s a local natural energy healer and antinuclear activist who, during the 50-acre burn of Rocky Flats, measured radiation levels that were 1,300 times higher than normal. This was inconsistent with federal and state agencies who measured no signs of dangerous levels of radiation.
So how can we know who to trust? Our government who has messed with the balance of our forests for over a century or a Clairvoyant who offers no solutions to the problem?
Luckily there is a third option.
The chosen doctor is native fireslinger Rick O’Rourke, who has utilized his ancestral traditions of intentional fires to renew life to the land, allowing for fresh growth of the forests. O’Rourke is more than a doctor. In an article by The Guardian titled Fire is Medicine: The Tribes Burning California Forests to Save Them, O’Rourke says “some people are like gunslingers and some people are like artists who paint with fire. I’m a little bit of both.”
While his ability to affect the land has changed from its traditional practice due to new regulations around burns in the view of natives as arsonists, his usage of fire is a native technique that has occurred for over 13,000 years. The knowledge that has been passed down to him and modern day tribe members could be key to our salvation.
These practices are becoming more and more relevant with many professionals seeing the value in prescribed burns and opting for their use.
A taboo around the prescribed burns approach has started to diminish in recent years as we have started to understand more about the ecosystems around us and the positive effects that wildfires have historically had on the land.
People are utilizing the practice on public and private land alike, helping with the enrichment of overused fields, to the preservation of historic lands and even assisting in the control of tick populations. This has led to a 28% increase in prescribed burns on U.S. forests and rangelands between 2011 and 2019. Even Smokey has had a change of heart that can be seen through the editing of his motto, from “Remember … Only you can prevent forest fires” to “only you can prevent wildfires” highlighting that he is now supporting natural burns while still promoting caution for unplanned burns, is a clear indicator that the mentality around fire is changing.
There are a lot of factors that go into whether or not a prescribed burn will take place. Jesse Moreng, a lead manager of the Colorado State Multi Mission Aircraft program, said there was a fire regime that used to naturally occur within Colorado. Now we have regulations on conditions of when and how these fires occur. Typically, years of planning and preparation take place before a burn is approved. Despite all of this planning and the number of successful burns that occur within Colorado, people tend to focus on the fires that get out of control.
Part of the concern around prescribed burns is people not knowing that burns are going to be in their area. Boulder County has tried to solve this by creating a mass text message service that is automatically sent out when there are prescribed fires within the county. For each prescribed burn, there is an information page about the burn dates, planned area, and maps that show the area that is planned to be burned.
Within Colorado there are over 180,000 slash piles, large piles of timber and fuel that have been consolidated together and are waiting to be burned — far too many for a single doctor to deal with.
These piles are often left in the forest unburned because of concerns that if they were lit that it would cause larger forest fires to occur.
This concept is actually contradictory to what is best for the forests; these create large fuel sources which if left abandoned and naturally lit, could lead to more large wildland fires. This leaves us in a predicament of wanting to control nature but our desire to tame fire has put us in greater risk to experience fires that get out of control.
🦠🌱 Wildfire recovery: the proof’s in the soil
Will Sylvain here. I’m a political science major and journalism minor, eager to talk soil.
Picture a wildfire. What do you see? Scorched trees, devastated forests, torched homes? Do you see acres of green canopy getting swallowed up by the “flaming front?”
If you’re like me, this may be what the word “wildfire” conjures. It might be easy to assume that these hallmarks of a wildfire can tell us the most about its behavior. But we can actually learn a lot by looking below the surface.
On a recent field trip to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, our class, “Reporting on Wildfires,” heard from doctoral students studying the effects of wildfires on soil, and what the microbiomes in those post-burn environments can tell us. From burn piles to pyrocosms, the researchers have been getting their hands dirty in the soil, hoping to see what it can tell us about wildfires.
Amelia Nelson, a CSU graduate student, has spent several years studying microbiomes in post-burn environments. Microbiomes include bacteria, fungi, and other organisms too small to see with the human eye.
“Soil microbes are very, very important,” she said, adding that studying them can tell us a bit about how resilient forests can be to wildfires.
Specifically, Nelson told us, microbial diversity usually indicates a happy and healthy ecosystem.
Her studies focus on how wildfire affects the amount of diversity in forest soil. Wildfires decrease the soil microbial biomass and diversity after a fire, she said, but Nelson’s research also shows that certain taxa of microbes can survive wildfire.
Actinobacteria are an example of a fire-resilient group. While their fellow microbes perish around them, their unique traits like thermal resistance, fast growth rates, and ability to nourish themselves with fire-affected carbon make actinobacteria one of the few survivors of a wildfire. Still, she said, research has found that nutrient cycling by soil microbes are altered for “decades” after a wildfire.
Nelson’s colleagues, Jacob VanderRoest and Julie Fowler, have been working on other ways to dig into this soil research. Their approaches have led to similar conclusions.
VanderRoest, a chemist, looks at how wildfires change soil chemistry and is specifically interested in proteins, which provide the food that Nelson’s microbes need to survive. Using what he called pyrocosms — small simulations of wildfire environments — VanderRoest found that proteins react to fire much like microbes do: many were incinerated, but a few types were resilient enough to stick around. For example, glycine, a protein-producing amino acid, was actually more abundant post-fire.
“A very important thing that you have to consider when doing science is the ‘why do we care about this in general — why am I spending time on this?’” VanderRoest said. “So one of the main questions is how and why do forests recover after wildfires? What contributes to that process?”
The answer to that question, he observed, lies in the microbiome:
“In order to go from a burned forest back to a recovered forest you need microbes to be present,” he said. “You need them to grow, and in order for microbes to grow and help spur that soil recovery process, there needs to be food in those soils that microbes can eat to grow and repopulate just like we do.”
Fowler’s studies focus on the soil conditions immediately after a fire ravages the landscape.
Because the just-burnt environment is dangerous to study in real time, Fowler used pile-burns, a small-scale simulation of wildfire environments akin to VanderRoest’s pyrocosms, and found that the soil conditions were similar to those seen in Nelson’s soil, which was sampled months or even years after a wildfire.
Fowler also presented photos showing areas where a high-severity wildfire had altered an entire ecological system — shifting it from a forest into a grassland when things started to regrow after the blaze.
The question, she said, is what might be driving that shift. Is it microbial driven? A lack of seed or fungi? Something else?
“This,” she said, “is a big question of why basically the three of us study what we study.”
🐛 Not just pests, parasites, and plants: to what extent are humans an invasive species?
I’m Tia Peterson, a molecular biology major and biochemistry minor, here to start a discussion on humans as invasive species.
Let’s talk about invasive species. When you hear the phrase, do you think of mussels on a boat, seeds on a shipping container, or some kind of noxious weed? What about humans?
A debate over an unofficial epoch known as the Anthropocene (the Greek terms “anthropo” for human and “cene” for new) continues to this day. Official naming of this epoch aims to hold humans accountable for their part in the changing climate. Though popularized in 2000, this epoch still has yet to be named due to its controversy.
“Scientists still debate whether the Anthropocene is different from the Holocene, and the term has not been formally adopted by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS), the international organization that names and defines epochs,” according to a 2022 item in National Geographic. “The primary question that the IUGS needs to answer before declaring the Anthropocene an epoch is if humans have changed the Earth system to the point that it is reflected in the rock strata.”(Epochs are different geologic periods. The Holocene is the current epoch. Now over 11,000 years old, its start date was at the end of the ice age.)
Some biologists have proposed a start date of the Anthropocene as between 1950-1954, when humans first started testing nuclear weapons.
The nuclear tests left plutonium, a radioactive by-product of nuclear bombs, in the geologic record.
This begs the question: if the negative impact that humans have on the world is contributing to an official epoch, to what extent should humans be considered an invasive species?
Amelia Nelson, the Ph.D. candidate in microbiology whose research is cited in the item above, said via email that this was a “really tough question.”
She explained:
By this definition — humans are most certainly invasive species although society doesn’t necessarily use this language. Even though we don’t explicitly call ourselves ‘invasive species’, we imply it through much of our language in reported scientific research. For example, in wildfire work, we often say that “human-induced fire suppression has led to an increase in wildfire severity & frequency” — i.e., humans are coming into an area they don’t naturally live and changing the native habitat (natural low severity wildfire)!
In a recent New Yorker article titled “The Burning of Maui,” Elizabeth Kolbert, author of the book The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, discusses the difference between the nomenclature surrounding the island's devastation. When she heard someone call the recent fires the “largest natural disaster Hawaii has ever experienced,” she opined that the Maui fires should rather be more accurately labeled as an “unnatural disaster” due to the role humanity has played.
Colorado currently battles plenty of invasive species, two examples being the mountain pine beetle and cheatgrass. The beetles bore into native pine trees, bringing with them a blue fungus that works to block the tree's circulatory systems. Cheatgrass, native to Europe, Asia, and Africa, benefits from seeding prior to native plants and steals nutrients with its faster growth rate. Both species are detrimental to the health of Colorado’s ecosystems, and help increase the natural fuel load that leads wildfires to spread and grow.
Invasive species have been bringing serious harm to environments for as early as humans had the means to travel. This became an especially exacerbated issue as ships came into the picture, providing voyage for non-native plants and animals from their countries of origin. But what classifies these offshore organisms as an invasive species?
In a 2022 National Geographic article, the guidelines are as follows: “To be invasive, a species must adapt to the new area easily. It must reproduce quickly. It must harm property, the economy, or the native plants and animals of the region.”
However, this definition was not uniform across the board. The criteria, as described in a Smithsonian article by science writer Sarah Zielinski, are “not so simple.” Zielinski said that invasive species can only be classified as invasive if there is “harm caused to human health.”
Wildfire season in Colorado, which used to span just the dry summer months, now has no seasonal boundaries.
As the planet warms, there has been more drought and higher temperatures, creating conditions for fires to flourish. Called “the main drivers of climate change,” Nikita Shukla at Earth.org explained how the rapid warming of the planet is the fault of people.
What about humans is so different from these species that we deem detrimental to the environment? Are we not viewed as a part of the ecosystem, but separate from nature? Would nomenclature impact levels of awareness surrounding increased wildfire severity? When do we decide a fire is unhealthy?
With increasing global population comes habitat expansion into Wildland-Urban Interfaces, known as the WUI (pronounced “woo-ee.”) The federal government has described the WUI as “the zone of transition between unoccupied land and human development” — or, basically, humans moving farther into the wilderness to build homes.
These areas are dangerous places to live because of their proximity to fuel loads like trees, leaves, grasses, and more, which increases the probability of wildfire destroying homes. Whether it be a multimillion dollar house in the Aspen area or low-income housing in the foothills of Colorado Springs, the risk might be the same.
But what classifies a wildfire as “dangerous?” The answer: when it poses a risk to human wellbeing. Fires in the WUI are deemed “dangerous” for this very reason. Dangerous to humans because humans live there. As humans encroach farther into the wilderness, the number of fires deemed dangerous increases.
Taking into consideration the disparities surrounding the definition of an invasive species, the habitats that humans live in, and humans effects on the climate, what do you think? Should humans be deemed an invasive species? You decide.
⏰’The fire community wanted this’: What took so long?
I’m Pierce Sullivan, a physics major and journalism minor, here to discuss Colorado’s efforts to implement a building code in the Wildland-Urban Interface.
Colorado, unlike other wildfire-prone states, actually has no defined WUI. Individual counties and cities have maps showing where the WUI is, but there is no statewide definition.
In 2021, areas burned by the Marshall Fire in Boulder were not considered a part of the WUI by Boulder County officials. But on a separate map, the Colorado State Forest Service included these areas in the WUI.
Not that it would matter, as Colorado has no statewide building code which can regulate the construction of homes in the WUI.
In response to the Marshall Fire, as well as wildfire activity across the state increasing since 2000, state lawmakers introduced legislation that Gov. Jared Polis signed into law on May 12, 2023, starting the process for creating something called the Wildfire Resiliency Code Board.
The board, which will consist of 21 members to be named by the end of this month and who will represent varying industries and regions, must “Adopt model codes, requiring governing bodies with jurisdiction in an area within the Wildland-Urban Interface to adopt codes that meet of exceed the standards set forth in the model codes” by July 1, 2025. The model code which the Colorado code will be based upon comes from the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code.
In 2005, California passed legislation to a similar effect. The state amended the California Building Code to set a minimum statewide standard for fire safety in the construction and sale of buildings in the WUI. Why is Colorado, with comparable fire patterns to California, almost 20 years behind in managing these fires at the state level?
This past week, I spoke with Colorado Democratic State Sen. Lisa Cutter, a lead sponsor of the measure, known as SB23-166, that created this new board.
“The fire community wanted this,” Cutter said. “The people that are out on the front lines, fighting the fires and mitigating and protecting their communities, their opinion carries a lot of weight with me, and this was something they really wanted.”
Cutter added that a standing committee formed in 2016 to study wildfire prevention called the Wildfire Matters Review Committee is bi-partisan, meaning Democrats and Republicans are on it.
“We all care about wildfires and we all want to do what we can to protect Colorado,” she said, “but we just have different ways of doing it.”
SB23-166, however, did not have bi-partisan support in the Capitol. In both the Senate and the House, the vote fell along party lines, with Republicans in opposition. The bill also faced opposition from major cities and municipalities, such as Colorado Springs, as well as the Colorado Association of Home Builders.
The opposition centered around prioritizing local autonomy in Colorado, as well as the rising prices which a statewide code would bring.
The CAHB stated:
“The December 2020 ‘Cost Impact Of Building A House In Compliance With IWUIC’ study by Home Innovation Research Labs estimates that complying with international WUI code recommendations in Colorado could add up to $37,955 to the cost of a single-story home and more than $48,000 to cost of a two-story home. We then balance that with the NAHB’s Priced-Out Estimates for 2023, which found that for every $1,000 increase in the price of a new home, 1,305 Colorado homebuyers are priced out of the market.”
Cutter rebuked rising costs by pointing to long-term impacts, saying, “lots of data suggests exponentially greater savings in the long run using fire resistant building materials.”
Although they lobbied against SB23-166, the CAHB reaffirmed their commitment to wildfire mitigation in Colorado.
“We will continue to work with local governments, fire districts, [homeowners associations] and others to help fund programs that educate and provide assistance for homeowners to create defensible spaces around their homes,” the organization said.
Neguse has a Republican sponsor for Tim’s Act
After we published an edition of Burning Questions on Monday, in which we explained federal legislation that would help wildland firefighters, a spokesperson for Democratic Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse emailed to say there is a Republican cosponsor on the bill.
Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania has signed on. Neguse said he is proud, and “will continue to call for bipartisan support of this proposal.”
“Our brave federal wildland firefighters are on the frontlines of every wildfire in our country. They are irreplaceable,” Neguse added. “For years, many of us have fought to secure critical pay raises for these first responders, which we successfully enacted in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law – this includes the introduction of my bill Tim’s Act, which ensures wildland firefighters are paid a wage that reflects the value of their work.”
You’re reading Burning Questions, a newsletter that seeks to help bridge a gap between wildfire science research and journalism, and is a project of the Colorado College Journalism Institute with support from a National Science Foundation grant. Students produced this edition in their class “Reporting on Wildfires” in the fall of 2023. Learn more about this newsletter here. 📬 Enter your email address to subscribe and get Burning Questions delivered to your inbox each time it comes out. You can reach us with questions, feedback, or tips by emailing burningquestionscc@gmail.com