Part I. 900 breakfasts a day: life inside the Gold Mountain Fire Incident Command Post
Days ago, it was the Ouray County Fairgrounds. Now it's a small city.
Nearly a thousand people are working the Gold Mountain Fire, which grew to almost 28,000 acres over the holiday weekend near Ouray and stood at 3% contained as of July 6th. To feed, house and support them, an entire town has sprung up almost overnight in Ridgway — hundreds of tents, streets of office trailers, showers, laundry, a medical unit and its own security.
"We really kind of set up a little mini town," says Tyler Nathe, one of the Operations Section chiefs with the incident management team.
The scale is hard to picture until you stand in it. In the mess hall, head cook Shamarie Bailey serves 900 breakfasts nearly every morning. Each firefighter on the line can burn through 5,000 calories a day, and refrigerated semi-trailers hold days of meals in reserve.
"I do it because someone has to," Bailey says. "People are out there fighting the fires for us, and we've got to serve them. They have to eat."
There are no volunteers in this camp. Every cook, driver and firefighter is a trained, paid professional, drawn from more than 30 states — among them a tribal fire crew from California, the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians. Even the small things reveal the discipline: crews walk single file everywhere, even to breakfast, because on the fire line that's how a crew keeps count of every member.
Reuben Farnsworth, a paramedic from Delta County, has worked fire camps for a decade. "It's a mobile camp, kind of like the camps they set up for military personnel overseas," he says. "Kind of like a little city."
The fire is burning in places locals love — the West, Middle, and East forks of the Cimarron, where families have camped for generations. Nathie, who grew up in Grand Junction, has camped there too.
Near the mess hall stands an information board with the morning's maps. One corner is saved for thank-you notes and was a little sparse on Monday morning. If you want to drop thank you notes for the fire crews call the hotline at 970-355-3286 to learn how to deliver them.
If you want to donate to those effected by the fire visit the Ouray County Community Foundation at wc-cf.org.
Part II. A team beyond the fireline: The hidden workforce of wildfire response
Wildfires have held the attention of Coloradans through a brutal season fueled by drought. But despite our fixation on the flames, few of us see the complex network of people working behind the scenes to fight them.
If you picture wildfire crews as helicopter pilots and firefighters working in the woods, you’re missing a big part of the picture.
At the Incident Command Post, dozens of people perform jobs that are essential to the response, but rarely get much public attention.
“And so our job here, you can kind of think of it like Amazon,” said Julia Pappas, an administrative specialist with the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri. “We get to post up maps, closures, detailed information of the incident,” said Matthew Gilatti, who works in public information. Brandon Hogeland, a lieutenant with South Metro Fire Rescue outside Denver, is training as a heavy equipment boss.
Those three individuals represent three very different roles. Pappas keeps the command post stocked; Gilatti keeps the public informed; and Hogeland operates heavy equipment used to repair areas disturbed by firefighting operations.
But this work is not solitary. The teams and individuals working on the fire hail from all over the country, but that doesn’t mean they operate as isolated cells. At the Incident Command Post, many roles become intertwined.
Hogeland’s team works closely with resource advisors, specialists who guide suppression efforts to protect natural, cultural and heritage assets. Those specialists, who usually have backgrounds in biology or environmental science, guide operators like Hogeland on repairing burn scars and minimizing impacts.
“This is on Forest Service land, so we work with the resource advisors as far as what they want it to look like and the specs,” Hogeland said. “So the guidance we got was to come in, smooth out or kind of roughen up where the bulldozer put in containment line and then to pull the brush back over it to help control erosion.”
He said resource advisors provide guidance on what the landscape should look like when the work is complete.
Pappas is working at the Gold Mountain Fire as a receiving and distributing manager trainee. Her role is crucial for managing the logistical supply chain supporting firefighting efforts.
“So we take in the materials that are needed out on the line and here in camp, and then as people need something, we, you know, package it up, and we deliver it to them, or sometimes, like, they'll come pick it up,” Pappas said.
She works closely with ground support, which provides drivers to transport supplies into the field. A camp crew from Oregon also helps package, consolidate and unpack materials.
“So kind of just to give you, like, an idea of what a typical day might be, so we have to keep track of what's in our yard,” Pappas said.And the collaboration doesn't stop at the command post. Gilatti says every person working on the fire has another network of people supporting them back home.
“And not just my wife, Olivia, or my kiddo Penelope, but my family, my, you know, my mom, sister, siblings, all my family, they jump in to help support her,” Gilatti said. “And then on top of that, you know, my home unit, too, they're taking care of staffing my position too.”
He said that while one person may leave their community to work on a fire, many more people are supporting that person behind the scenes.
“So huge, huge shout out to the families out there for everybody from the firefighters online to, you know, the incident commander, logistics, radio comps, everybody that does stuff here, they got somebody else back home helping take care of,” Gilatti said.
From the people repairing containment lines to those keeping the command post stocked — and the families supporting them back home — wildfire response depends on far more people than those we see on the fireline.
It’s a vast network of people with different skills, backgrounds and responsibilities, all working together to keep each other safe and protect communities.A team beyond the fireline: The hidden workforce of wildfire response
Part III. Montrose honors pilot killed battling Gold Mountain Fire
San Juan Avenue. They held American flags in their hands or draped them across their cars. The crowd was solemn as a line of emergency vehicles passed. The procession was escorting the body of Nicholas Dale, a helicopter pilot who died while fighting the Gold Mountain Fire.
The first responders stoically kept their eyes on the road ahead of them. But there was palpable emotion among the residents watching.
The Montrose Board of Commissioners delayed their meeting yesterday morning in order to attend the procession. Commissioner Hansen told us, “When you have people that are brave enough to risk their lives to help us and make life better for us, you can't help but be on this lineup with all these flags and get teary eyed because a young man gave his life in order to protect us, and so it's meaningful.”
Dale, the pilot, was a 56 year old man from Sooke, British Columbia. He was the sole occupant of the helicopter, which was engaged in suppression efforts for the Gold Mountain Fire. The aircraft went down around 5:17pm Sunday evening, and crashed into the Silver Jack Reservoir. The Montrose County Sheriff’s Office dive team were called out to the scene, and assisted the Gunnison County Sheriff’s Office with the recovery.
Commissioner Kirsten Copeland said the procession’s attendance “reflects the Montrose community, how much our first responders mean to all of us. … All of those folks put themselves at risk every day to protect us, and I think this community recognizes that and shows up.”
The crash is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Part IV. Can Changing Our Language Change Colorado's Relationship With Fire?
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.
Part V. A forest drier than kiln-dried lumber — and the tree that slowed the fire
To sell kiln-dried lumber legally, Kevin Sweeney says, it has to test at 12% moisture or lower. "So that's two by fours that have been cut up, sent to the kiln, dried out, and now they're ready to get bought at your favorite lumber store." Some living trees in the Uncompahgre were testing at 9% — drier than the lumber at the yard.
Sweeney is a public information officer (PIO) on the Gold Mountain Fire, and in late July he drove the KVNF news team up Owl Creek Pass and into the burned perimeter. Most of us spent this summer watching smoke roll through the valley's southeast corner worrying for some of our favorite mountain areas.
If you are expecting the worst, you may be surprised, One hillside is black, the next one over is green, and that holds for miles. "Because you see red [on the map] doesn't mean it's black, right?" Sweeney says. "Like the red is just that area within the fire." Inside that line, he points out, there are "perfectly green trees that have no impact to them."
Where the fire did run, it ran hard, driven by wind. So why is anything still standing? That 9% figure came from a fire behavior analyst, and the analyst on this fire, Glen Lewis, made a video for the incident's own YouTube channel explaining how it burned. His answer is the aspen. "our firefighter's friend," Lewis says.
He gives three reasons. Aspens "shed these lower branches as they grow and get taller." That leaves no ladder carrying fire from the ground into the crown. Their fallen leaves form a mat that traps moisture and feeds a green understory, which "holds a lot of moisture in it, and it's very inhibitive to fire spread." And the leaves themselves lack "the volatile oils within the needles or within the leaves that even the oak trees have that makes them want to burn more intensely."
Of those oils, Lewis says: "It's kind of like pouring gasoline on fire." Aspen leaves do the opposite, absorbing heat rather than feeding it. In aerial photographs of the burn, he points at green patches standing inside it: "But the aspen kind of held it."
Sweeney says the burned ground should come back next summer with wildflowers, because fire returns nitrogen to the soil. This "is not a good fire by any means," he says, "but there's patches of good within the fire."
We drove past the draw where my (Brody Wilson's) family cuts a Christmas tree most years. Some of it had burned. Sweeney said: "There's going to be some of that grieving for the what's lost while with you guys and your community." He went on: "You're going to that fishing spot that your grandpa took you to. And now it looks different."
Watch the full fuels video from the Gold Mountain and Elk Fires incident, in which fire behavior analyst Glen Lewis explains the fuel types on this fire and why aspen stands slowed it: https://youtu.be/cmXRtv9F01M
Part VI. Long after the smoke column is gone, the work on the Gold Mountain Fire goes on
The Gold Mountain Fire is 90 percent contained and has grown by about an acre in ten days. Evacuation zones in Montrose and Gunnison counties are standing down. But 229 people are still assigned — and much of their work now is undoing what firefighters did in June and July. (Figures as of Aug. 6.)"Long after the smoke column is gone, there's still a lot of work being done," said Brenden Hoglund, a lieutenant with South Metro Fire Rescue outside Denver, working this fire as a heavy equipment boss trainee.
He stood at a stretch of line above Owl Creek Pass — "about 1,000 feet of control line that was put in," a strip wider than a two-lane road, bladed to bare dirt so the fire would starve when it reached it. It worked, and then the line itself became the problem. Abandon firelines cause erosion, become unwanted ATV trails or ad hoc roads.
Undoing it is its own assignment, called suppression repair: smooth or roughen the bared ground, then pull the brush back over to slow erosion. That isn't the operator's call. Resource advisors write the specs — specialists who, Hoglund said, "usually have some kind of a background in biology or environmental sciences," and who decide what keeps the ground "from being a scar, minimizing the impact as much as possible."
The same obligation follows onto private land, where landowners who hosted crews get their torn-up roads regraded before the fire crews leaves.
None of that, though, makes the country safe to walk.
"A recently burned area is a dangerous place," said Kevin Sweeney, the information officer with the complex incident management team on the Gold Mountain Fire. Flash flooding is one reason. Hazard trees are another, and the dangerous ones don't always look it: soil burned near a trunk, then soaked by monsoon rain, can leave a tree green on top and failing underneath. "The tree might look healthy, but its root system might be damaged," Sweeney said.
The Forest Service will clear hazard trees along roads before reopening them, but "they won't get to all of the hazard trees for the whole forest. They'll focus on the roads, then they'll focus on trails."
At an overlook halfway up the pass, Sweeney stopped this reporter from walking to the edge of a burn for a photo. A snag overhead was flagged, and the flagging, he noted, "literally says killer tree." He wouldn't walk under it either: "I don't want to walk up in there. I got kids."
His advice for hunters, hikers and Christmas-tree cutters this fall: on a windy day in a burned area, watch for that "hairs on the back of your neck" feeling — and leave.
Closures remain in effect, and Sweeney asked for patience with them — catching himself mid-sentence as he did. "Those closures aren't in place because we want to keep folks out of here. Well, they are in place because we want to keep folks out of here." It isn't that people shouldn't enjoy their land, he said: "there's some pretty serious hazards back here, and there's a reason that that area is closed."
As Hoglund put it: "The folks are still here working, even though there's not a lot of smoke in the air." ...at least from the Gold Mountain Fire.
