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Wildland Fire Conference Addresses the Human Condition

Christopher Biddle

 

Wildfire is an increasing problem for Coloradans. They’re bigger than ever before, lasting longer, and affecting more people. That’s prompted some in the field of wildland fire mitigation to shift their focus towards psychology and sociology. KBUT’s Christopher Biddle has the story.

 

The 2018 wildfire season is already considered one of the worst in Colorado’s history. Meanwhile, the wildland-urban interface, those semi-residential, semi-rural areas where private property often buts up against wildfire prone landscapes, is the fastest growing land use type in the country. That means more fires are affecting more people.

 

Lovgren1- 9.6 sec

“An increase in wildland fire activity, more homes in the way and a changing climate that seems to be trending towards hotter, drier longer fire season.”

 

That’s Eric Lovgren, a wildfire mitigation coordinator for Eagle County, and one of the organizers of the 2018 Colorado Wildland Fire Conference held in Mount Crested Butte in September. Beside booths from various state and federal agencies, wildfire mitigation non-profits, and private companies showing off their latest fire-fighting tools, Lovgren tells me that he and the other organizers have shifted this conference away from some of the more technical aspects of wildland fire mitigation, to focusing in on the people affected by wildfire.

 

Lovgren2 – 14.65 Sec

“We didn’t want another conference where we all talked about how we suppress wildfires or how we build defensible space, but how do we convince people how all of this is necessary, and what is at the heart of this problem, because it seems like it’s cut and dry by it’s as complex as anything I’ve ever worked on.”

 

Edwards1 – 9.12

“So we work to ensure the exchange of wildfire knowledge and science between researchers, communities, and managers.”

 

That’s Gloria Edwards, program coordinator for Southern Rockies Fire Science Network, and another one of the conference organizers.

 

Edwards2 – 21.77 sec

“We often see wildfire as a landscape problem, a natural resource problem, or just some big monster that shows up every once in a while because of all sorts of bad management decisions or irresponsibilities or a variety of variables; and when you really look at how wildfire is managed or how its responded to, it’s really a social issue.”

 

With a theme titled People, Places, and Perceptions, Wildland Fire and the Human Condition, this year’s conference offered seminars on communication and team-building.

 

Baker1 – 14.65 sec

“So I have the magic wand with me and my challenge to you is, when you go back to work on Monday, what’s different? What happened? What magic did we do here that when you go back, it’s different?”

 

That’s George Baker, a former fire-fighter turned executive coach, who really is walking around the room with a big plastic cartoony-looking magician’s wand in this clip. Baker was one of the Keynote speakers at the Wildland Fire Conference this year and I sat in on a break out session he led.

 

Baker2 – 15.62 sec

“You know in wildland fire management, leadership is really important because with leaders you develop followers; and today we really talked about really communicating with our constituents, people in the communities, the elected officials, to really find out what they want because we need to do it together.”

 

While Baker’s brand of high energy team-building focused on the managers themselves, other speakers and classes spoke to interactions with the larger public. Again, here’s Eric Lovgren.

 

Lovgren3 – 24.78 seconds

“Yesterday’s keynotes, same thing, we had Dr. Patty Champ, who is an economist at Colorado State, kind of bringing together the full ramifications of the behavioral economics of wildfire, and then we heard Dr. Paul Hessburg’s Era of Mega-Fires, where we talk about fires over 100 thousand acres, and the prevalence of them in the past ten years, and what do we do with mega-fires.”

 

By that definition, The Spring Creek Fire, which burned more than 108 thousand acres earlier this summer would be considered a mega fire. It’s the third largest fire in State history in terms of acreage, behind the 2013 West Fork Fire Complex (which is when several smaller fires merge into one) and the 2002 Hayman fire. All-in-all 2018 had five of Colorado’s twenty largest wildfires, and it’s not done yet. At the time this story was produced in early October, there were still five active wildfires burning across the state, where the wildfire season used to end in September.

 

For Rocky Mountain Community Radio. I’m CB.