A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.

31 July 2015

News coverage of the Reynolds Creek Fire

Over at the Flathead Beacon, Kellyn Brown explains how the Beacon has covered the Reynolds Creek Fire, and forest fires in general. Reading between the lines, it’s clear that local business interests believe the Beacon and the news media in general have hyped the fire to the detriment of the local economy:

To many, why a fire erupted is less important than how the impact of the blaze is communicated to a larger audience. If someone searched Glacier National Park online over the last week, they were greeted with dozens of headlines and photos showing the woods ablaze.

A young tourist, who recorded a dramatic video of the fire quickly moving toward his family’s vehicle, was interviewed on NBC Nightly News’ national broadcast. None of this sits well with business owners who rely on the summer season to buoy their respective bottom lines.

For us, when the fire grew from a 2-acre burn to a 1,000-acre blaze in just five hours, we scrambled to publish information as warm winds pushed flames toward popular east side locations Rising Sun and St. Mary (the Baring Creek Cabin was destroyed).

As we responded to the fluidity of the story, those in the recreation and tourism industry stressed the importance of explaining that fires are typical in Montana, the park is still open and most areas are not affected by smoke. This is all true.

I think the Beacon’s Justin Franz, the InterLake’s Sam Wilson, and The Missoulian’s Vince Devlin, have reported and are reporting the fire well. I have no sense of how well local television reporters have covered the fire because I find TV news not very useful and no longer watch it.

Photojournalists, the Beacon’s Greg Lindstrom in particular, captured dramatic images of the fire. So did tourists to Glacier, every one of whom was equipped with a camera, who were on the Sun Road when the fire blew up. More on fire photography in a moment.

What was missing until the last few days were good maps of the fire.

Maps place the fire in geographic context. The fire is in Glacier National Park, so the responsibility for producing maps belongs to the National Park Service. Unfortunately, that responsibility seems to have been delegated to the firefighters, who understandably concentrated on fighting the fire, not on explaining to the nation where the fire was and was going.

Yet information necessary to produce useful maps was available from the gitgo.

It may be that large bureaucracies such as the NPS simply are not nimble enough to produce maps of the fire’s perimeter, park closures, and so forth, on short notice.

But private sector cartographers can produce maps quickly. We live in a golden age of mapping. A Geographic Information Systems expert has the ability to produce good maps right away. The tourism industry should consider making a formal arrangement with a private cartographer to quickly produce maps that place fires in geographic context. That’s a better approach than complaining that news stories aren’t positive enough.

Photography. Dramatic images of wildfire produce an emotional impact, which is why news organizations, especially television, publish them. But dramatic images also can make a fire appear larger and more dangerous than it actually is. That’s why maps are so important, and why it’s so important that the maps are made available on the internet quickly so that tourists outside Montana who plan to visit the state during fire season can judge for themselves the impact the fire will have on their vacation plans.