NON-TAPE: COLLAPSE
Part II of the White Tape - The Black Tape. The Consequences of a National Park Wildfire in 2074 and the Collapse of Places and Industry. This Post has a Heavy Focus on Consequences.
Preface
Non-Tape: COLLAPSE is the fifth tape in the ongoing Cassette Series and continues the release The Truth is Written and With Each Word the Future is Lost | A Societal Problem, also known as the White Tape. It is a tale of wildfire, the destruction and extended disruption it caused, and consequences that may have been managed if the precarity of the system (economic, socio-technical, ecological) relationships were recognized and addressed long before it became obviously apparent. It is also a story of collapse, of a permanent end of the state or existence of a specific system or systems, that is irrecoverable as it once was. All collapse creates a mess, the extent of which is rarely understood by any one person. After collapse, the primary example used here has massive economic implications to the individual, banks, and not spending money that circulates into the national economic system. At the same time, ecological systems have been decimated in this example, and while after generations they will recover, they will not be the same - they will have a new state. The effects extend far from where they started and will entangle with other subsystems. Consequences are discussed plainly to inspire or support long-term discussions of their management now. Once the collapse has created a mess, it is far too late to be anything but reactive.
Historically, more traditional work on this blog has been released under Operational Coherence and less conventional writing under NoiseBox. These two related tapes are published under the identifier “Not on Label” and the black tape labeled a “Negative Volume” to communicate the negative nature of what has been written that continues in the spirit of the white tape with a severity beyond the typical labels. Both identifiers are borrowed from music. The notion of Negative Volume is used in music for albums that communicate negative themes and content, and the emotions expressed by it, including pain, despair, anxiety, sorrow, and loss, all of which align with this post titled COLLAPSE. Lastly, it is a “Non-Tape,” in that it excludes itself from the series, projecting itself as a dark shadow of a tape. While unavoidably a premonition, labeling this post a “non-tape” is in hopes it will not be materialized. Perhaps consequence management smeared across ecological, social, economic, and production systems will rise to the challenge long before the white tape’s speculation of the return of ghost towns materializes.
Some artists, notably early smaller niche artists, often released albums independently, without a label. Doing so circumvents a formal label’s potential refusal to release a new piece of music due to content or a desire not to release music too quickly. With complete creative control, artists do not need to align with a particular label; instead, they can create music as an authentic expression without constraints, expectations, or label interference. The result may be an unfiltered and more intense version of the music usually made by the artist, or an altogether experimental record that moves beyond the boundaries of their expected sound.
This post and the Cassette Series it belongs to may eventually become part of a more substantial outcome, such as a book. The Cassette Series and some older works, including the Deep Chaos post, focus on chapter-length pieces that provide room for significant exploration and relationships. I hope you can find the time to read this post in its entirety.
COLLAPSE follows a purely speculative, imaginative, and dystopian fiction style motivated by the question, “How will we act in a world of dwindling and foregone futures?” A critical element of situating oneself in the present narrative is that the crisis of 2074 is already unfolding. French philosopher Morin (1993) writes that when it comes to the word crisis, “Using the term merely allows one to say that something is wrong” (p.231). This is the definition used here.
Introduction to the Cassette Series
In addition to fire, GregoryVig also explores design, complexity, biology, and resilience, which are all part of this blog’s more extensive project and apply to wildfire and any other risk management work.
The Cassette Series is an aesthetic that celebrates a perceived intersection between music, writing well, and early cassette culture's subversion of formal music institutions. While the author does publish, it is firmly held that not all writing should be behind paywalls. Early cassette culture saw the appearance of now-famous artist-owned labels that would publish avant-garde music at a rapid pace. A “Do it Yourself” attitude prevailed during this time, and continues to this day with the release of cassettes. For releasing writing (cassettes), blogs are equivalent to the artist-owned label. Embracing this culture to the degree feasible has always been the goal.
From its first tape, the Cassette Series has made it clear that the author recognizes a unique link between listening to music and writing. The series has also been open about its influence, namely older industrial work, such as tapes ranging from noise to power electronics to death industrial and a few extreme metal bands.
Contact: greg@gregoryig.com Use only with permission.
The sounds of collapse offered by Megaptera. Post-Industrial music for effect. Warning, for some.
Introduction
The white tape focused on the arrival of a future fifty years from now, but stretched as far as halfway through the next century at times. The essay focused on dynamics, economies, population, hazards, climate, and the human experience. Not included in the writing was the influence a hotter and more disruption-prone world would have on essentially every industry in one small way or another, but particularly the outside industries, skiing, snowboarding, road cycling, mountain biking, BMX, skateboarding, recreational cycling, running of all varieties, rock climbing, triathlons, baseball, softball, soccer, tennis, track and field, hiking, backpacking, and camping, in National Parks, for instance.
Although initially distinguished as sports, the list above is also one of industries. Behind each sport is a busy industry that designs, develops, manufactures, markets, and sells products directly or to online and brick-and-mortar stores. The disappearing physical store, whether close to the location where the activity is done, such as a pro shop at a tennis complex or a mountain shop at a ski area or nearby, will likely have professional service technicians, salespeople, managers, and decades of collective experience.
Rental services may be found in many contexts. For example, ski areas that use their mountain for mountain biking in the summer and even host formal events of different disciplines may offer bicycles, equipment, and professional service. In the winter, the same mountain will rent boots, snowboards, helmets, skis, and poles and continue to provide service to those who own them.
The sports industries are driven by the continuation of people's participation in them and the mass consumption of all related gear and equipment. If the sporting industries are to sustain, sports practice cannot cease. This puts intense pressure on the environment in which sports take place, including its safety and availability.
Recreational and leisure sports are crucial customer bases to any sport. In addition to these two categories, formal, sanctioned events for competitive athletes run by a promoter or promotion team are essential to many sports to drive revenue and growth. Athletes are charged money to enter, usually win medals, and sometimes money for placing in these events. The pursuit of success in any one of these formal competitive events drives mass consumption by athletes continuing to buy the lighter, stronger, faster, more advanced, and more accurate equipment motivated by increasing their chance at winning. Formal events and the participation of top-tier athletes that become icons and sources of inspiration are an essential part of the industry, but not the only part.
A much more significant portion of the population that engages in sports with varying levels of commitment can be coarsely divided into leisure and recreation: those who are not competitive but enjoy multiple sports, perhaps more than the competitive athlete, who may be focused on only one due to training and competing commitments. Investments in various sports by leisure and recreational enthusiasts drive revenue across multiple industries. Sporting has, at a minimum, three levels, all with different motivations and goals, and all of which spend money.
For athlete or enthusiast anticipation, infrastructure is required in some cases. This is perhaps no more apparent than in downhill snow sports. For these sports to occur, many elements must be in place, including weather alignment. With some regional variability, water for snowmaking and equipment, grooming, lights, lifts and operators, snowmobiles, ski patrol, junior and senior race programs, coaches, hill hands, special events, lodges, restaurants, bars, bathrooms, parking attendants, ticket and group sales, ambassadors, membership in multi-mountain passes, leadership and management. The list continues and includes helicopters and guides in some small cases.
The Plot Warms
The white tape showed that the earth may warm 5.4 to 9 degrees over the next fifty years, which is where this blog is situated in 2074, the United States. Whether at the low estimated end, the high projection, or somewhere in between, a rising global temperature will change patterns of outdoor activities and even reduce their occurrence. As time inches closer to 2074, athletes and enthusiasts will be unable to enjoy participating in their sport or sports outdoors during multiple long (growing longer) stretches of extreme heat in the summer and warmer and wetter winters. Possibilities for outside activity are not nonexistent in the summertime. Still, they are typically found in the earlier parts of the season and early in the day, conflicting with the many work schedules. Opportunities for sport in 2074 are also more plentiful in the late fall and early spring, though they are warmer overall. The compression of ideal time for suitable, or even safe weather for non-winter activities may be enough to deter leisure or recreational enthusiasts from continuing and reduce revenue across industries.
A warming earth also decreases opportunities for sanctioned events put on by promoters. Promoters depend on sanctioned events to generate revenue, whether part of a series or a standalone competition. While the depths of summer may be unsafe for competition, promoters and competitors alike must adapt to new climate conditions and adjust when and where competitions are held. Heat will design the new normal for leisure, recreational, and competitive athletes and begin to reduce revenue in various industries. These are not indications of industry collapse. They are indications of a need to adapt to changing contexts through scheduling, communication across social media, related independent films, messaging from famed athletes, and the behavior of the industries. The notion of collapse explored here is violent multi-system disappearance involving economic, socio-technical and ecological systems and their many subsystems. Collapse occurs when the assemblage of systems is no longer economically or otherwise sustainable, has little to no transmittable value left, no market, or is otherwise no longer viable. Collapse lays rubble to whatever falls victim to it. This will be explored throughout.
From a Broader View
For the potential ramifications of collapse to be fully understood, the context in which one instance of collapse occurs must be specified to build a narrative. While a state park would be an adequate example, a National Park would be more appropriate. A hypothetical National Park, managed by the National Park Service under the Department of the Interior, is an ideal setting to expand the narrative. Ice climbing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, skiing, snowboarding, snowkitting, and sledding in this vast National Park are popular in winter. After the park thaws, mountain and road cycling, hiking, running, rock climbing, backpacking, camping, fishing, rafting, and paddling are the dominant sports. The Park can and its possibilities for activity can drive sports equipment sales across multiple industries, both for visitors and locals. National Parks around the country have a similar effect on consumer behavior.
The Park attracts visitors who spend money on entrance fees, park passes, and supplies, pay to rent sporting equipment locally, or use what they have previously purchased to engage actively with what the park has to offer. Visitors also pay for backcountry permits and campsite spots, and when available, competitive athletes pay fees to enter competitive events, which the Park also profits off of. The town leading the Park, the gateway town, includes sporting goods stores, tourism, hotels and other lodging, shops of all varieties, scenic areas, coffee shops, a winery, restaurants, and bars. Through visitation, revenue is created for the Park, the gateway town, and the sports industries that make equipment to enjoy the park in particular ways. When environmental factors are within reason and everything is more or less stable and predictable, the assemblage of systems is in harmony, with each one making money. Everyone is happy, and happy they have to ask, “Now, how do we make more money?”
However, the park’s ability to drive revenue in these different areas is precarious. In 2074, should the global temperature warm by the outer estimation of nine degrees, visitation to the park will decrease considerably in the summer heat. The park will experience revenue losses from day and backcountry passes, campsite reservations, and organized event fees, including weddings, gatherings, and competitive sporting events. Increased heat is the beginning of turbulent and uncertain waves forming in the oceans of the interrelated system. Decreased visitation will result in revenue losses for promoters putting on events, equipment not purchased to compete, camping supplies, and general sporting equipment not sold or rented to support activities in this National Park.
The Beginning
A wildfire within the Park can be readily imagined with a new dominant pattern of hotter and drier weather. A forest fire started in early July during prolonged high temperatures, low relative humidity, and no moisture, placing the park in a drought. Kiln dried vegetation including grass, multiple species of brush, and trees were readily available. A long history of successful fire suppression prevented fire from reducing the amount of easily combustible vegetation in the Park and led to its accumulation. In these conditions, the wildfire spread rapidly and severely throughout the Park, leaving behind a barren landscape of ash. The wildfire severely burned hundreds of thousands of acres in the park, crossing famous trails and roadways and decimating the vegetation around bodies of water, streams, campgrounds, and scenic areas. Due to how severely the fire burned, it will be multiple generations before the land recovers enough to meet visitors’ expectations. Areas untouched by the wildfire were small, but the Park staff would find ways to admit people still. The water grows choppy.
The park was closed during the wildfire through the control and containment phases, lasting into the winter and spring as remaining heat was extinguished, dangerous burned, and unstable trees along trails and roadways were cut down. During this time, there was no park visitation, and no entrance, campground, special event, or other permits were issued and paid for. As the fire spread and the Park closed, no one but fire personnel were needed in the park. The Park quickly had no use for the remaining seasonal and permanent staff, including fee collectors, federal law enforcement officers, dispatchers, park rangers, climbing rangers, trails crews, and many administrative positions. Employees who held permanent positions were moved to other Parks, while the seasonal staff were laid off early.
The Collapse
Somewhat
It was soon public knowledge that most of the Park's more desirable and easily accessible locations had been intensely burned. Pictures surfaced of roads lined with ash and famous scenic locations surrounded by a gray landscape dotted with the charred skeletons of trees and brush. The park's desirability as a vacation and recreation spot plummeted even before it reopened. The following year, the park opened on a restricted basis through a reservation system for the areas that were not burned, reducing fees considerably, far below half of the norm. The incredible heatwaves of 2074, which began before the onset of summer and occurred as late as fall, further deterred people from entering the Park.
Staffing opportunities in the park became minimal, reducing employment opportunities for the local community and those interested in relocating to government housing for six-month seasonal positions. The positions laid off early or transferred during the prior year were not filled, and others were eliminated. The enormous decrease in park staffing opportunities immediately became problematic for the surrounding communities, which depend on the park for permanent or seasonal employment. The waves grow taller.
With more than half the park burned, employment opportunities in fire management were most plentiful, but chainsaw qualifications were required. Fire management was focused on wildfire rehabilitation and reducing hazardous trees along roadways and trails. Additional labor-intensive fire positions were added to match the park’s post-wildfire needs. Employees from the previous year’s trail and forestry crew and backcountry rangers competed for these positions in wildfire. Increasing the wildfire management force also enables the rapid suppression of new fires in the remaining unburned areas. Throughout the year, despite the best efforts of fire management, additional fires were started and continued to reduce parts of the park untouched by fire and opportunities for athletic endeavors.
The park was formerly a year-round location for engaging in various sports. After the fire, it lost over half its appeal, driving leisure, recreational, and competitive athletes away from the park. A rapid decrease in opportunities to engage in sports rippled through local and even more distant sports equipment and gear stores. In the park’s gateway town, equipment was no longer rented for use in the park, including bicycles, fishing gear, snowshoes, and backcountry and cross skis. The same equipment and gear were also not purchased or rented by visitors or bought in the gateway town or online by local or nearby community members for use in this Park. Of course, sports sales continued as they always had elsewhere. The lack of sales for sporting equipment to a single National Park was consequential locally, but not to neighboring counties, the state, or nationally.
Returning to the imagined Park, the gateway town now becomes the focus. The consequences of the Park’s limited staffing on the local community were profound, and many moved away to work for other public lands. However, the impact of decreased visitation on the gateway town must be considered, as fewer people exploring the park led to reduced spending in the town. The Park had not collapsed, as there are still broad stretches of vegetated land, campgrounds, and scenic locations to offer visitors, but around half of what existed pre-fire. The burn area was strictly off limits as work was still taking place. Burned Area Emergency Response teams from the United States Forest Service, National Park Service, and other agencies were brought in and working with the Park’s fire management personnel seeking to reduce hazards and extinguish residual heat as the summer warmed.
The more desirable areas were turned to ash by the initial fire and were slated not to recover meaningfully for decades. The Park’s eagerness to welcome visitors during still hot but safe temperatures in the summer, in densely vegetated areas during often uncomfortably warm and critically dry weather, created considerable risk. Optimizing visitation from a financial standpoint led to an above reasonable number of people in the unburned areas of the Park. As the number of visitors increased, so did the number of negligent acts with camp stoves, camp fires, and the use of fire in the limited backcountry areas, which led to more ignitions and fires that burned more acres throughout the Park, which were immediately suppressed with an army of firefighters. Still, the park lost more useable territory to non-linear shaped burn scars surrounded by green trees, brush, and grass.
The park was precarious. Should a highly probable situation occur where a fire is established in the right area during the height of fire season, now recognized correctly as a “fire year,” a powerful and fast-moving fire could quickly vanquish the remaining forested areas. From a visitation standpoint, a Park consisting of ash will collapse in on itself. As a consequence, visitation will decrease drastically, and patronage of the gateway town will follow suit.
The consequences of the wildfire that burned so much of the park extend beyond job availability for the local community. Many nearby communities owned businesses, predominantly in the gateway town, which Park visitors drove through to get to the entrances. Equipment and gear rentals, tourism, and guides immediately saw revenue losses as the Park closed through three seasons. These losses continued with dramatically less visitation. Most guides and tourism companies saw decreased revenue through the same period but experienced an increase when the park opened for the summer and incorporated the fire into the tour, safe from the road.
Compared to sporting and camping goods stores and tourism services, there were far more businesses selling souvenirs, jewelry, clothing, coffee, tea, wine, and art. The hotels, Airbnbs, other lodgings, two grocery stores, laundromats, and a hardware store supported Park visitors and the gateway town by keeping tourists within the town’s limits.
Many, but not all, members of the surrounding community had their livelihoods spread across their homes, property, and gateway town businesses. It was understood but not frequently thought of that gateway town businesses could survive on the patronage of locals alone or tourists coming specifically to spend money at the businesses. Most sales were driven by those coming and going to the park.
It quickly became widely known through social media and TripAdvisor that much of the park had lost its appeal due to the fire and the reduction of the green landscape to ash. Some visitors were critical of the park’s admittance policies on a reservation, first come, first served basis. They also argued that “too many people were being put in the few green, unburned places the park had left for passes and entrance fees that still cost the same.” One visitor, in particular, found this true even in the backcountry: “We spent one night in a crowded campground where campfires were lit even when expressly forbidden and spent the other nights in the backcountry. We were surprised at how many other people had passes for the same route that we did. The visitor’s experience was not placed first.” Business and residential property owners were becoming increasingly anxious as even the maximum level of visitation within the constraints of extreme weather and the occasional small wildfire, made sustaining a profitable business challenging, even at the height of the season. The waves were growing taller and starting to be noticed, and some took action.
More So
Business owners, in particular, continued to grow nervous as new and old media reported on the poor state of the park. Regardless of what an article, interview, or post was about, it was common practice to include the statement repeated from an earlier article’s title that the park would not be the same for generations and generations. By midseason, the low level of visitation continued to tax companies. Without hesitation, those who had long owned their business liquidated their inventory and left the area altogether were convinced there were worse ways to exit.
As the summer turned to fall, most businesses in the gateway town had already drastically reduced staffing. The gateway town had suffered through the first post-fire peak-tourist season, at best generating fifty-five percent of their accustomed revenue; many business owners did much less. Visitation was variable as the temperatures decreased relative to 2074 seasonal weather patterns from mid to late fall and toward winter. The businesses knew it could be slow time for visitation, but looked optimistically toward the winter as the park was well-known and frequented for its snow sports opportunities.
It was thought a covering of white would soon conceal the ash, and while there would no longer be iconic branches of coniferous trees covered in snow to ski through in the glades, the fire opened up new terrain for skiing and snowboarding. New alpine zones, chutes, and basins had been created through the sizeable reduction in trees and brush through the wildfire. The Park seized these fire-created opportunities to optimize visitation, which would benefit the gateway town financially. Once sufficient snow was on the ground, the locals and tourists converged on the park, who were likelier to buy hats and sweatshirts and have a meal before leaving town.
Winter was well underway in the park and gateway town. Enthusiasts heavily trafficked the newly expanded designated downhill snow sports areas, cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing. As did sporting goods stores, rental and tourism services saw a welcomed increase in demand. Many other gateway town businesses also enjoyed more foot traffic and spending. The gateway town was not on a path to recovery, but was doing better than the lull between seasons, where anxiety became overwhelming waiting for winter.
The snow melted much faster than usual due to heavy usage from visitors, infrequent snowfall, and the absence of tree cover. The Park became concerned with the low snowpack over unstable ash, and after a few serious related incidents, leadership decided to close to winter sports. Following this decision and the outcome of silence descending upon the park and town, many owners closed their businesses for the winter in efforts to reduce losses. Some businesses created online storefronts to try and generate some revenue. For others, savings were spent to pay for their storefront and keep the heat on while looking naively and optimistically at next season. Business owners who were able to leave the gateway town left, selling their inventory at heavily discounted prices to those who chose to stay before selling their home. Throughout the gateway town, there was a race not to be the one holding valueless storefronts and selling homes at a loss.
Park visitation would be minimal throughout the rest of winter. The decision to close the Park to winter sports was met with outrage across social media by business owners and visitors alike, often referring to leadership by name out of anger. What was once a nationally acclaimed Park had turned into a long-term subject of ridicule and referred to as a “management failure.” Anxiety had been displaced by despondence. More businesses and homeowners left the town, even if it meant taking a loss as they knew they had much more to lose by staying. The interdependencies between the Park and the gateway town had never been more apparent, and they were rusted and starting to break down in complete corrosion. The waves had grown taller, were capped in white, and were heading to land.
COLLAPSE
The Park opened once the roads were cleared, and lower elevation areas outside the burn area became safely accessible. The remaining snow limited access. Due to the small area available, the Park restricted the number of people allowed access, which received mixed reviews. Although the level of tourism at this time was generally thirty to twenty percent of the norm or worse, as more of the park was opened, visitation hit forty percent of the ten-year average. If this continued, the remaining business owners thought they might be able to survive the year. Most had this thought in conjunction with buying enough time to liquidate and sell their home and business. Many wished they had left after the fire and felt sorrow and regret for not doing so.
Unfortunately, several feet of remaining snow began melting quickly as the temperatures increased. Heavy snow laden with moisture, over a foot of ash, dirt, loose rocks, and fallen burned trees mixed, creating mass movements cascading powerfully down steep slopes. These movements became common. Sometimes, this phenomenon was inconsequential if it occurred in closed parts of the Park. Other times, it was highly problematic and even deadly, as these sudden, broad movements crashed down steep slopes constantly gathering momentum and materials and blocked roadways with metric tons of material. In some cases, multiple vehicles, waiting for the wildlife to clear the road, were trapped and damaged by the mass movement of materials becoming airborne, off a slope or retaining wall, and covering the road and ground. A volatile and heavy mixture may at worst trap cars and occupants, block traffic, and at best only in one direction. Mass movement trapped visitors in various parts of the park and prevented others from accessing them. Removing this material was time-consuming and involved heavy equipment filling trucks that constantly made trips to offload the material. These operations could take place concurrently with search and rescue and lifesaving efforts. The park reported one fatality and multiple injuries related to these movements.
Inconveniencing parkgoers did not improve the Park’s image as an attraction. Social media posts featured videos and pictures of towering piles of material being moved by excavators, with descriptions that conveyed their frustration over being trapped on a one-way in, one-way out road for five hours. Others lamented not being able to travel to the spot they had come to the park to visit. The Park has been the subject of displeasure and outrage for nearly a year and only worsened. Park leadership was continuously balancing the risk of people in the Park with meeting the tourists’ and locals’ expectations that the public land would be open.’
As the movements proved deadly, expensive, and time-consuming to remove, as well as an inconvenience and danger to visitors, Park personnel discovered areas of instability left behind from each movement that would be sensitive to rain and create slides. Park administration closed at-risk roadways that cut across the lower portion of slopes until this phenomenon had ceased.
A small number of people were able to access the park each day. With the burned area lining trails and mass land movements shutting down roads, promoters of events that would have made money for the Park and the promoters canceled and located their competitive events elsewhere. It was not just canceled races that did not take place and were not sold passes. Events including weddings and elopements, reunions, corporate retreats, wilderness CPR, medical and low-angle rescue training, passes for fly-fishing guides, and vehicle tourism also did not pay to access fees to the Park.
With the Park’s image continuing to deteriorate across the nation, road closures, and great uncertainty surrounding the months ahead, worsened by generations of recovery still ahead of it, the Park was one considerable wildfire or damaging adverse event away from collapse. Yet, the gateway town was already in the process of entirely collapsing. Those who owned their businesses had already left, while new business owners and those who leased faced a predicament. More people claimed bankruptcy each week, broke lease agreements, and continued to sell their inventory online. Slowly, closed boarded up shops outnumbered open ones and homes were sold out of desperation. Chain hotels and coffee shops in the town's area ceased operations. Privately owned lodgings remained open but received little to no business and recognized the difficult decision they would soon need to make. Many endured the pain of realizing they had made a linked array of bad decisions they could not fix now.
Soon, the businesses lining the streets to the Park’s entrances in the gateway town were closed, as were those outside the central area, such as the sporting goods stores. All hotels had ceased operations, and every empty business had a local realtor sign attached to it. What was once busy all year round was now a ghost town, even if taxes were still being paid on the abandoned shops. The gateway town had collapsed.
Previous businesses and homeowners alike felt many negative emotions as their world slipped by, and they went to find homes and jobs or start businesses elsewhere. In addition to pain and devastation, there was growing resentment toward the Park. The fire's final report discussed historic fire management practices and their shortcomings. It was suggested that an explosive and fast-moving fire was tied to management decisions that continually favored prompt fire suppression, not natural resource management. Community members, including the gateway town, quickly found meaning in this finding, and it became the central focus of discussion in online groups. As the message was rearticulated and transmitted widely, the Park became villainized and seen as the reason for the severely devastating fire that would reduce visitation considerably year-round and lead to the collapse of the gateway town and so many livelihoods.
The fire, seen publicly as the result of negligence and lacking foundation, was connected to the downfall of everything that relied on the Park as a community pillar, including the gateway town and the housing market. It was easy for those scorned by the Park to continue elevating it as grossly negligent in managing wildfire, ultimately leaving so many community members with nothing. Even though the community that had experienced the fire had relocated, they remained engaged in discourse over the fire, the seasons spent controlling and containing it with the Park closed, and what happened after, including job loss, the low visitation, canceling winter sports, and the fire-related mass movements. The culminating effects and stress rippled throughout the area.
After the wildfire and the communication of the time needed for recovery, many homeowners sold as fast as they could. At this point, most homeowners in the community pre-fire had sold their homes and moved on. These same community members, whether connected to the now shuttered gateway town or not, felt the Park had shirked its responsibility to manage fire effectively in favor of visitation. The exclusion of fire from the Park’s landscape throughout time in connection with the much hotter landscape of 2074 had created a tinderbox. The majority thought the Park acted irresponsibly again by not communicating the existence of a highly explosive landscape conducive to a fire that would put smoke in the air for months and ultimately reduce. Most business owners were unaware of the precariousness of the interdependencies between the local economic system and the Park’s ecological system. They blamed the Park for the perilous situation that had been realized and the gateway town and the satellite businesses that collapsed because of it. The linkages and interdependencies between systems had rusted through and turned to dust. There was nothing left for either system to relate to. The towering waves had crashed onto the shore.
It was not just businesses that were up for sale. The longer homeowners waited, the more of a loss they took. Realtors could not work fast enough. With low prices, many homes were purchased quickly. Buyers who primarily worked from home and wanted to escape city life remarked that even though the Park had been burned, the area around their home and plenty of other places in town remained unharmed. None of the new community members knew each other; they were inexperienced with the natural hazards prone to the area and did not understand their role in managing them. They did not understand the town’s history. They were strangers in a strange, dangerous land. Once again, it was not a recovery but better than a complete loss.
Conclusion
The Park has always known that visitation was tied to weather and natural hazard events. While the Park invested time and energy into mitigating fire risk due to the amount of risk and the size of the Park, it could not reduce fire risk everywhere through mechanical thinning with chainsaws and burning piles of trees in the winter, or what was left of winter in 2074. The Park could also not be entirely confident that its mitigation efforts would slow or impede a wildfire. Still, it continued to make informed decisions about thinning and fuel breaks.
There was a history of small to medium-sized fires in favorable weather in the Park, most of which were handled by Park fire management resources and, at times, other fire resources. The summer of the high-severity fire that covered hundreds of thousands of acres and left behind a moonscape of ash had long been theorized. However, it was seen as a low-probability, high-consequence event and identified as an incident that would quickly turn into a Type 1 campaign fire. Once weather, topography, and fuels aligned with human negligence, the fire quickly started moving faster and with more energy than could be stopped. The fire burned for three months as the firefighters faced numerous challenges before it was contained and several more to control. Smoking heat sources made themselves evident throughout the following summer. A painful, panic-inducing realization came with the assessment that it would be several generations before the park recovered to the bottom limit of visitor expectations.
The gateway town that sustained much of the surrounding community had also been aware that its sales correlated with weather and natural hazards. Still, it had never conceived of a fire that would render over half the park unusable, the winter season closed, and the spring tenuous as mass material movements occurred that inconveniently spilled over roadways leading to closures. The gateway town started to atrophy. Correctly interpreting the early weak signals, those in the position to leave, who owned their business and most of their home, went quickly. In contrast, others made difficult decisions about proceeding and leaving before their home lost more value while their businesses declared bankruptcy.
After the gateway town appeared to be beyond recovery, homeowners were affected. The collapsed gateway town is visible as a sign of significant trouble. The value of living in the surrounding communities, even seasonally, had been all but erased. Local and county lands remained untouched for now, providing some appeal, but going out to one of the many restaurants that used to dot downtown was now impossible. Activities like going for a bike ride or a run in the park were nowhere near what the experience used to be with trail and road closures and passing through fields and slopes of ash. The remote working population was attracted to the cheap real estate and the opportunity to live in the mountains. Perhaps homebuyers were not fully informed, or their eagerness to live in the area produced selective hearing. Still, the two main attractions tied to home value, the Park and the gateway town, were generations away from recovery. A year later, after the slow and then sudden closing of the gateway town, the Park and local real estate lost their remaining value and appeal after another destructive large wildfire burned the remainder of the park—insult to injuries.
Before the final fire, the Park was near collapse, given its limited capacity, controversies, lack of attraction, disruptions from destabilized earth on steep hillsides, and continually worsening reputation. Once the Park suffered another massive, high-severity fire, it inched closer to the gallows. This fire stopped because it connected with the burned area from the previous fire and ran out of fuel to burn. It would have continued otherwise.
Some staff members, such as fire personnel and limited leadership, may stay on, so the degree of collapse may be “almost entirely.” Or, as has famously been said, the park would be “only mostly dead” or mostly collapsed. No visitation has injured the Park due to the once scenic landscape being turned to ash, safety issues, and destroyed infrastructure. The Park will enter a prolonged recovery phase once the fire personnel complete their work and leave. Other local federal ground and aviation resources will occasionally enter the Park to see how it is progressing, and assist if anything needs to be managed directly. There will be little reason to keep the leadership staff at the incinerated Park, which will also collapse once the last person leaves and drives down the street that exists as a graveyard, a ghost town.
The park, adjacent communities, and gateway town were always precarious. However, there was a multitude of different opinions on just how precarious they were, none of which were based on science or a total awareness of the Park’s management choices. An extreme wildfire revealed just how perilous the local assembly of socio-cultural, economic, and ecological systems was and how quickly the threat of collapse could be faced. Considering the problems experienced post-fire in the park, including business closure and plummeting property values, there was always a need for consequence management before the wildfire destruction in the park spiraled throughout the surrounding area. There was no planned way to contain it.
A Return to Sport
Mountains in National Parks charred and turned to ash by fast-moving and intense wildfires, and shuttered gateway towns are not the only areas of concern. The macro level must also be considered. In 2074, ski areas endured warmer temperatures throughout the country, battled days of rain, and worked with increasingly infrequent natural snow. In some fortunate periods, snow fell and could be groomed into short-lasting corduroy before a mass of skiers and snowboarders repeatedly descended the mountain. As they enjoyed the ski area more and more, they soon found conditions poor. Snowmaking was a regular occurrence for those with the capacity, even on top of a base of slush from recent rains mixing with minimal snow. However, there had to be sensitivity to how much water was used, especially in futile snow-making operations, and where it came from. The ski season shortened, and while the ski areas suffered, so did their gateway towns, especially the hotels. As the consequences of a failing ski season year after year expanded around the country, the number of seasonal communities surrounding and intruding onto ski areas sold quickly before skiing was not an option. With skiing disappearing throughout the United States, ski areas turned to summer events.
Homes once bought for millions for mid-mountain access, surrounded by snow, now sit vacant and surrounded by damp grass by mid-winter. Resale values had plummeted. There were foolish hopes the winter of the late 1990s would return, though the long-term warming trend projected from 2074 onwards presented another future. As demand decreased, manufacturing of gear and equipment slowed in response, companies laid off staff, and the industry began to contract. In the case of skiing in the United States, if the sport collapses, the industry built up around it will collapse, and the economic disaster it will create will be monstrous and spread worldwide. Due to the fall of skiing in the United States, international gear and equipment companies will suffer. Collapse creates a mess. Devoting time and energy to the foreseeable collapses and addressing them and the mess they will leave behind is critical.
Everything we have is a gamble. A change in circumstances is often needed to expose how much of a wager is being made, and we learn how much we stand to lose and how quickly. Picture-perfect lives can suddenly become concerned with how food will be put on the table, how businesses will be kept afloat, how industries will survive, and how public lands will be managed in a new climate. Everything is a gamble, and the house always wins.
Thank you for reading. The writing is nothing by itself.
Sincerely,
Gregory Vigneaux, M.S. /Embers, Then Ashes/Progetto Morte
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