This summer's vast wildfires have left many Coloradans wary. And that fear shows up not just in how we react to wildfires—but in the words we use to describe them.
Kevin Sweeney, a Public Information Officer working on the Gold Mountain Fire, told us, “When we speak about fire, we use negative language. We use scar, we use scorched, we use words that have high emotional value typically negatively.”
While showing KVNF around the edge of the fire, he stops us before we get too close to a blackened tree. He points out a flag that says “killer tree,” indicating that it could easily fall. In these situations, harsh language can be useful. A negative term, like “burn scar,” helps people understand that the area is dangerous.
But outside those immediate safety warnings, Sweeney says that same language can shape how people think about every kind of fire, including the prescribed burns that help reduce future wildfire risk. “One of the hurdles we have to get over with getting more prescribed fire, more beneficial fire on the landscape is reducing the fear of fire in our communities,” he told us.
Sweeney feels a special connection to this land, as he once lived on the Western Slope and got married in Ouray. He says, “We need more fire in the West, and that's a really hard thing to say when you're driving through a 40,000-acre fire that almost burned down a town, a town that I got married in.”
Instinct tells us that fires need to be put out–immediately. But when it comes to wildfires, the answer isn’t that simple. Sweeney says that when European settlers came to North America, they had really only experienced fires that burned entire towns down. The Ute people and other native groups “would come up into these lands and hunt and then migrate down into lower valleys, but they would light fires behind them when they left so that they could have good hunting grounds.” Sweeney says the current mindset of “put every fire out” has resulted in disasters like the Gold Mountain Fire.
Sweeney recognizes that changing the way people think, or speak, about fire isn't easy, especially after a summer like this. He says it’s important to be sensitive about the tremendous impact they can have, but also says, “I come from a place of knowing that the only way we're going to fix this is by having more fire.”
For Sweeney, changing how we manage fire starts with changing how we talk about it. Because if every fire is seen only as destruction, he says it becomes much harder to use carefully planned fires that can help prevent the next disaster.
