Beyond Texas
Nonchalance toward Colorado wildfires helped fuel devastation: Keeping touristsa warped priority
Interstate 25 out of Colorado Springs bogged down into a surreal, smoky, hazytraffic jam as everyone seemingly tried to flee the wildfire at once.
Manitou Springs kept its eyes focused on the tourists even as the flames roarednot far away.
The Colorado Springs wildfire hovered over the city — and then struck.
Summit at the Broadmoor, where trendy cool never left.
Barack Obama toured the fire ravaged areas of Colorado on Friday.Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
This is Las Vegas . . . New Mexico, where some tourists who left during theColorado Springs wildfires marveled at the attempts to reassure them to stay.
On the first night of the Colorado Springs wildfire, the dining room of Summit restaurant at The Broadmoor resort was packed with people celebrating the night away.
Next to our table, an extended family hooted and hollered over a milestone birthday, nearly waking the baby in the stroller who was part of the party. All it'd take to catch a glimpse of the large smoke cloud billowing from the growing wildfire was walking a few feet outside of the sleek dining room — and looking up.
But no one did. The Waldo Canyon Fire was almost completely out of mind on this Saturday night.
Even in a post-Katrina world, many rush to dismiss natural disasters, to hurry to assure rather than react with force. Don't scare away all the tourists.
When I asked our waiter — an earnest young fellow with a good eye for Colorado beers — about the fire, he almost seemed surprised by the question. Nothing to worry about, he assured.
"You won't even remember this fire by Monday," he said.
This was the refrain repeated throughout the first several days of the worst wildfire in Colorado history. Tourist destinations closed down by the encroaching flames — Garden of the Gods, Pikes Peak railway, Cave of the Winds — all urged would-be visitors to check back the "next day" in their recorded messages. The Santa's Workshop amusement park kept stressing that there was no damage to its rides, making it seem like reopening could happen in a couple of hours. Santa's magic and all.
Nobody wanted the tourists to leave.
The race to keep dollars in this tourist destination overshadowed the race to put out the flames. Then, the flames jumped the containment lines of the firefighters who knew what they were dealing with all along — and everything changed. Three hundred and forty six homes have been destroyed, more than 17,000 acres burned and two people died in the fire. President Obama's visited and a state of emergency was declared. The fire finally may be under control and Colorado Gov. Hickenlooper says he believes the worst is over.
With the smoke starting to clear, it's time to wonder if the insistence on pretending that everything was normal — that the fire was nothing but a momentary inconvenience — contributed to the devastation.
Downplaying the potential impact of the fire — as those dealing with tourists did time and time again during my family vacation to Colorado Springs during the fire — ended up doing no one any favors. It helped create a full sense of security in the region, even as a giant cloud of white smoke hovered on the horizon. It's easy to see how this false sense of security could have carried over to residents too.
The whole city seemed to be living in a cocoon of denial.
Even in a post-Katrina world, many rush to dismiss natural disasters, to hurry to assure rather than react with force. Don't scare away all the tourists. Colorado Springs is still open for business.
Colorado Springs Mayor Steve Bach deserves credit for standing up from day one and talking about this as a fire to fear, the type of fire that the city had dreaded for years. But few others joined in. Instead, just wait till tomorrow became the common theme.
Tomorrow, everything will be back to normal.
Of course, it will be a lot more tomorrows before Colorado Springs is ever completely whole again now. This tourist haven has been rocked by a real-life tragedy. All the denials and disbelief could not keep the flames at bay.
You have to wonder if economic sense pushed aside common sense.
Inside The Fight
The firefighters putting their lives on the line did their best to detail the ferocity and destructive tendencies of this fire. More than a few likened their mission to trying to hold off a hurricane. Still, the fire got downplayed.
It sometimes became painted as more of an inconvenience that needed to be knocked down rather than a raging wall of flames.
You have to wonder if economic sense pushed aside common sense.
Roger Miller, chief operating officer of the visitors bureau for Manitou Springs (the gateway town to many of Colorado Springs' most beautiful tourist attractions), talked to the Los Angeles Times about a campaign to lure the tourists back.
"We're all going to get together soon to dream up a slogan that would bring people back to town," Miller said.
Is that really where the priority should be?
The people of Colorado Springs could not have been nicer to my family during our Colorado Springs visit. This includes some evacuees who found themselves sitting around a marshmallow pit at the Cheyenne Mountain Resort, watching kids fascinated by flames even as their own homes were in danger of burning. Everyone wanted to make sure you were having a good time despite that pesky inferno up the road.
A stop in Las Vegas, N.M., on the drive home found many just-left Colorado Springs tourists marveling over the same thing. Even as you left in that eerie smoky haze, even as ash flew through the air, people wanted to know, "Did you have a good time?"
The somewhat embarrassed answer is almost universally, "Yes." It feels weird — and more than a little wrong — to be saying that when hundreds lost their dream homes and a few lost their lives.
Colorado Springs was still a good time through all that. But when a region gets this wrapped up in what tourists think, it's easy to see why those towering flames were downplayed.
Something is messed up with this type of thinking. Embracing tourists shouldn't mean having to brush off watching your land burn.
Some will argue that the economy doesn't stop for the fire. Manitou Springs businesses have laid off 74 employees since the start of a fire that's barely more than a week old. That says more about those business owners than the fire at this juncture though.
Life should stop for some things. Layoffs should hold for some things. The most destructive fire in Colorado history seems to qualify as one of those things.
Ignoring tragedy shouldn't be a strategy.
