If you have lived in Colorado long enough, you know the signs.
The smell of smoke before you see the plume. The strange color of the sky. The little sideways glance at the wind. The map refresh. The mental inventory. Where are the photos? Where are the medicines? Where are the pets? Is the truck full of gas? Do we need to be ready to go?
On the Western Slope especially, people know the drill a little too well.
But this week’s fire news is not just about acreage, containment lines, or the latest agency update. Colorado Public Radio reports that three firefighters have died battling the large wildfire along the Colorado-Utah border.
That changes the whole posture. You take your hat off. You lower your voice.
And you remember that behind every official sentence about a wildfire are human beings carrying an almost impossible burden. Crews on the line. Dispatchers on the radios. Pilots in the air. Deputies knocking on doors. Volunteers helping evacuees. Spouses waiting for a text. Kids hoping mom or dad gets home safe.
Sometimes they do.
Sometimes they do not.
That is the part we should never get used to.
In wildfire country, it is easy to let the language become routine. Red flag warning. Incident command. Air resources. Evacuation order. Mutual aid. Containment. Necessary words, all of them. But those words can make us forget what they are describing.
They are describing men and women who run toward smoke while the rest of us back away from it.
They are describing courage in yellow Nomex.
They are describing people willing to stand between a bad wind and somebody else’s home.
And now, in this case, they are describing loss.
There will be time later for investigations, reports, lessons learned, and all the other things institutions properly do after tragedy. Those matter. But first comes grief. First comes gratitude. First comes the plain human duty of saying that three people died serving others, and that should stop us in our tracks.
Colorado cannot afford to treat wildfire response like background noise.
Not emotionally. Not civically. Not practically.
We should support the people on the line. We should listen when fire officials speak. We should take evacuation notices seriously the first time. We should prepare our homes and families before the smoke is at the driveway. And for heaven’s sake, we should not make a hard job harder with carelessness, recklessness, or dry-country stupidity.
There is a common-sense form of respect here.
Clear the brush. Know your route. Help the neighbor. Say thank you to the first responders. Teach your kids that fire season is real. Pray for the people who go to work in it.
This is a sad day for Colorado and for the families now carrying a grief no press release can soften. We mourn the fallen. We pray for the people who loved them. We thank the crews still out there doing dangerous work in terrible conditions.
And then we do the decent Colorado thing.
We stay alert.
We help our neighbors.
And we remember that courage often comes home tired.
When it comes home at all.
Source: Colorado Public Radio
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