Incarcerated firefighters, fire-fighting families, fire-starting animals, and more
Plus, restrictions journalists in Colorado face while covering wildfires
💥Welcome to another installment of Burning Questions. Buckle your seatbelts, tighten your hoses, and sharpen those axes. We’re back.
If you missed our most recent installment, check that out here.
Today we have stories about incarcerated firefighters, restrictions to reporting journalists face while covering fire in Colorado, firefighting families, and another story of (wait for it) wildfire and wildfire-causing animals. Today’s newsletter is written by Colorado College students Anna Wooster, Ayden Cherry, Henry Hodde, and Vivian Zander.
What’s the latest for incarcerated firefighters in Colorado?
A flat rate of $40 a day might seem like short change for wildland firefighters on the line of duty, but for Colorado’s incarcerated people the work is about more than monetary value — and it’s under threat.
The Colorado Department of Corrections’ State Wildland Inmate Fire Team, known as SWIFT, held its inaugural season in 2001. Since then, crews of incarcerated individuals have fought on active fire lines, mitigated fuel reduction and removal from high-consequence forests, and helped reduce post-burn erosion. Every day spent working in the field is a day cut off from an incarcerated person’s sentence. SWIFT work could be a hot commodity.
Despite recruitment efforts, SWIFT crews are shrinking.
Last summer “there was a significant effort to increase the number of SWIFT firefighters,” Alondra Garcia-Gonzales, a spokesperson for the state’s Department of Corrections, which oversees the program, said last week. “There were 89 inmates assigned to crews in both Canyon City and Rifle,” said Garcia-Gonzales. That number, she added, has fallen to 24.
Garcia-Gonzales said recruitment to increase crew sizes “continues to be a priority,” but the team operating in Rifle was shut down due to challenges recruiting civilian staff. “Achieving a crew size greater than 36 will be extremely challenging with the new eligibility criteria,” she said.
People in prison looking to join a Colorado Correctional Industries SWIFT crew used to have to pass extensive approval criteria. Earlier this year, the Durango Herald reported that the process is meticulous, and only a slim section of “model inmates” are eligible. Prisoners looking to work on the SWIFT crew must have already completed half of their sentence. Sex offenders and violent criminals are prohibited from this work as they do not meet CDOC security clearances. Incarcerated people must be within five years of parole eligibility and be within 10 years of their release date.
But because crew sizes are shrinking some of these requirements are being waived, Garcia-Gonzales said. She confirmed to Burning Questions last week that CDOC is “no longer requiring crew members to waive parole and community corrections during the fire season.”
People experiencing incarceration go through the same training criteria as those hoping to land on a non-incarcerated wildland fire crew. This includes a physical capacity test and roughly 85 hours of National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) training courses including S-130, S-190, L-180, and S-212. CDOC confirmed to Burning Questions that incarcerated individuals have to pay for this training out of pocket. Post completion, they are considered “red card” holders with certificates valid for up to five years. Red cards are essential for those looking to find work on firelines after release, and in this case, for reducing recidivism rates.
Recent litigation in the state of Colorado is attempting to make the hiring process for former SWIFT members easier.
They certainly have the experience.
“SWIFT crew sees fires all year long because we are the only 20-man crew available in the winter and off-season,” said Garcia-Gonzales, the CDOC spokesperson. “So far this season we have been on six and expecting more to come.”
Last summer, The Colorado Sun reported that “no former prisoners have been hired by Colorado to fight wildfires since a law passed to help.”
Last week, Garcia-Gonzales confirmed that as far as she knows that is still the case. —Anna Wooster
‘It’s frustrating covering fires in Colorado’: Media access is more limited than in some other states
Some firefighters we’ve heard from over the past few weeks have complained that journalists sometimes get the story wrong. But those same firefighters also said they want more journalists on the fire line.
On a recent field trip to a wildland fire aviation hangar, a group of wildfire aviation experts said some of the best stories they’ve seen are from journalists who experience a fire firsthand, embedding with crews working to fight it.
In a past class, Denver Post photojournalist Helen H. Richardson noted to students the difficulties journalists might face in Colorado while trying to report on wildfires.
“It’s frustrating covering fires in Colorado,” Richardson said, adding the state has access restrictions that don’t exist in other states, like California.
According to a 2020 Associated Press article, journalistic access to fire varies “wildly” from state to state. “Some other states only allow journalists behind fire lines with escorts, while others rarely grant permission for reporters to get anywhere near an active wildfire, saying that safety is paramount,” the authors write.
Unlike some states where wildfire is a fire department's jurisdiction, wildfires in Colorado are a sheriff’s domain. A sheriff’s job is to “get everyone out of the scene and to basically cut off access,” Richardson said over the phone last week.
In California, for instance, it is much easier for journalists to access these fires and properly report on them.
California state law grants journalists special access to report on wildfires and other natural disasters. When citizens are required to evacuate an area, this law exempts journalists from mandated evacuations and allows them close access to fire sites. Colorado has no such law.
“Contrary to popular belief, having press credentials in Colorado means absolutely nothing,” Richardson wrote in a 2020 article. “It gives you no access at all.”
Speaking to students, Richardson said that even if journalists can access a fire they are often only allowed to stay in media staging areas, which can sometimes be miles away. Sometimes the only access journalists can get is through media tours conducted by an official. Richardson added in a later interview that these tours can either be hit or miss.
In Colorado, anyone wanting access behind fire lines, reporters included, needs what is called a red card certification.
According to one Colorado red card instructor, Bobby Ryan, the training is a standardized course that teaches individuals the ins and outs of wildfire with special emphasis on fire safety. The course teaches participants about fire behavior and weather so they can be safer behind the lines of a wildfire. All wildland firefighters are required to complete this course before joining a fire crew.
However, a red card isn’t the end-all-be-all for journalist access to fire in Colorado. “The problem with the red card is that in Colorado I don’t think it does much for you,” Richardson said.
Even with a red card, journalists might still be unable to access what they need for their stories, Richardson said.
However, there are several loopholes that journalists can use to access a fire. In her piece, Richardson explains that the beginning of the fire is usually the most chaotic resulting in fewer authorities and limitations on who can access the fire.
“The minute you leave [a fire line] you are not getting back,” Richardson said in an interview, explaining that even when a reporter is behind the lines of a fire their access is rarely permanent.
Sometimes the people with the best access to fires are the ones already there. Citizen journalists, evacuees, and so-called looky-loos actively contribute to the media coverage of these fires. (Richardson said the Denver Post will even pay some non-journalists in order to publish videos and photos they have taken of fires because of their proximity.)
“Somebody’s always got a cellphone out trying to take a picture and film it,” said Mike Willie, Manitou Springs Fire Department’s wildland coordinator, in a recent interview.
Willie noted that nowadays everyone has access to a camera on their phones making it more and more common to see non-press-affiliated citizens creating fire-related media.
While there may not be a concrete solution to this issue, journalists must still find ways to get the necessary access to fires to do their jobs. As some firefighters have told us, often the more time a journalist spends with the fire and those around it, the better their stories will turn out. —Ayden Cherry
Fire in their blood
For the Battins, fighting wildfire is a family affair. Listen to what they told Henry Hodde about it here:
🐦 Birds: An Unsuspecting Culprit
Have you ever seen a bird on a wire and wondered what it was doing there? Birds rest on power lines as a source of warmth and use them as a safe haven from predators. But that behavior can put those who are on the ground in jeopardy.
Statistically speaking, 85% of wildfires are caused by humans. According to the National Park Service’s evaluation of fire origins, human-caused fires result from unattended campfires, debris, cigarettes, intentional arson, and equipment use and malfunctions. Notice that nowhere in this list is there a mention of birds. This is because these fires are indirectly caused by humans — and our introduction of flammable technology.
Interestingly enough, we can actually blame birds for at least some of these fires, according to a member of the Grand Lake Fire Department. A couple weeks ago, our class met with Dan Mayer, the Fire Protection District Fire Marshal, who spoke about bird-caused wildfires.
This abstract for a 2022 research paper published in Wildlife Society Bulletin explains (emphasis ours):
Uncontrolled wildfires are occurring with increasing frequency across western North America due to a combination of wildfire suppression, climate change, impacts from mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae), alterations in range composition by nonnative grasses, and human population growth in fire-prone landscapes.
A poorly studied mechanism of wildland fire ignitions occurs when a bird perched on an overhead power line is electrocuted, its plumage ignites, and the burning bird falls into and ignites dry vegetation.
“More than three dozen fires started this way in the United States from 2014 to 2018, according to the most comprehensive analysis yet of such blazes,” the journal Science reported last year.
Power lines are by no means indestructible.
They face a high risk of damage, especially with a rise in temperatures and increased intensity of storms. In the United States, only 20% of all power lines are in underground networks according to T&D World, a service providing “electric utility professionals with information about the latest technologies & solutions in the energy industry.” Among that percentage include the cities of Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. T&D World is one among many associations working on taking a number of cities under their wings, hoping that percentage will soar by 2040. Cities with underground power lines aren’t subject to the same threats as overground lines such as falling trees, hotter temperatures, humidity, dry vegetation — and birds that use them for their convenience.
Overhead power lines in Grand Lake have fallen victim to this. Mayer said he investigated six or seven blazes that sparked after a bird fell off a wire, smoldered to the ground, and ignited a grass fire in one fell swoop.
“Squirrels and other rodents can get into the power lines as well,” Mayer said, “but birds are most common.”
While this type of fire might be a more recent issue, they are becoming more frequent and catastrophic.
Burning Questions reached out to six sources seeking input on this issue, and almost none of them got back to us.
Mayer suggested that some companies “may not want to talk about it because they are typically liable for the damage the fire can cause.” People are constantly looking for someone to blame, he said, and the birds certainly cannot provide money to fix the aftermath.
Naturally, some now turn to electrical companies to lay the blame for the flying sparks. Utility companies are under increasing pressure to mitigate the risk of power lines from causing wildfires. On top of this, they incur thousands of dollars in damage every year to their own equipment.
Among these companies is Xcel, the largest utility in Colorado. They faced much controversy for the ignition of the Marshall Fire in 2021 when wind blew down one of their power lines, which sparked a fire and contributed to 6,000 acres of burned land and homes.
This incident dragged down other large conglomerates, all facing intense scrutiny from that point on.
Xcel is still facing lawsuits to this day.
Michelle Aguayo, a media relations representative for Xcel, said they have been working on mitigating the potential for wildfires since 2019, but greatly stepped up their efforts over the past two years.
The safety concern in communities is a driving force in this operation, causing the company to deploy helicopters surveying over 1,000 miles near Denver, using LiDAR technology to detect any wildfire risks. All of the data they collect is compiled to replicate a 3D model of the system, simulating potential scenarios.
They are working hard to reduce as many wildfire threats as possible with on-the-ground technology as well, Aguayo said, and encouraging citizens to get involved with community outreach while increasing education on safety and preparedness. (Read more here: Xcel Energy Wildfire Mitigation Program.)
This particular mitigation program has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its efforts and is constantly churning out new assessments.
While all of these operations develop, you might wonder: why haven’t electrical companies switched from overhead lines to underground lines?
The primary reason is cost.
Adam Paulson, the operations and engineering manager at Mountain Parks Electric, says the company is replacing more and more overhead lines to underground every year.
“This takes time and millions of dollars to complete,” he said. — Vivian Zander
You’re reading Burning Questions, a newsletter produced out of the Colorado College Journalism Institute with support from a National Science Foundation grant. Students produced this editions 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