After a blaze broke out this week near the Northern California border, it was immediately designated, with little fanfare, Bogus.
Perhaps not the best name — considering it was dangerous enough to prompt evacuations and, at more than 400 acres, is not fully contained — but it originated on Little Bogus Creek Road.
Naming wildfires has for decades been a way to streamline communication, direct resources and inform the public. In California alone, the list of active wildfires is long and colorful: The Cow fire. The Royal fire. The Pay fire. The French fire.
Seemingly random or playful to those unfamiliar with an area, they belie a dull truth. That is, fire names are typically a literal and boring reference to a geographic location.
And so the 2018 Carr fire was named after Carr Powerhouse Road. The 2017 Nuns fire after Nuns Canyon Road. The 2007 Witch fire for Witch Creek.
The names are generated within a split second, usually based on the first idea uttered by the initial fire official on the scene or a dispatcher taking a call. Advised to keep it tied to a nearby landmark, those who christen fires find harried inspiration in roads, mountains and streams. (Although names can often read as if there was no inspiration at all: the Mountain fire, the Lake fire, the Creek fire.)
Sometimes, simplicity is best, said David Acuna, a battalion chief for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. He was recently responsible for naming a fire that started near Domengine Ranch in Fresno County.
“You can imagine if we had the incident commander and other people saying Domengine, Domengine, Domengine on the radio — that would be very taxing,” he said.
Acuna instead anointed it the Dom fire. And when three fires in the area were recently set off by lightning, he said officials had been mindful not to overlap. The Bolt, Flash and Strike fires were born.
It is a method far less calculated than the one used for hurricanes and tropical storms, which get their names from rotating lists maintained by the World Meteorological Organization. This year has brought the rise of Alberto and Beryl. In the wings for the future: Francine, Kirk and Milton.
But wildfires vastly outnumber hurricanes, with tens of thousands each year in need of names and the discretion left up to responding agencies.
There are, however, guidelines set by the National Interagency Fire Center, a government entity that coordinates firefighting agencies around the country.
A name should be relevant and concise. Don’t use the name of a person, a company or a private property. Using one from a past fire is OK as long as it was not catastrophic. It must be at least two alphanumeric characters but no more than 55. It should not include the phrase “dead man” or anything similar. Also: No slang, keep it professional and be sensitive.
Of course, some names don’t make sense, even to the locals. In 2015, a wearying season and the lack of a significant landmark led to the Not Creative fire in Idaho. And in 2012, a blaze that broke out in North Carolina on Father’s Day was oddly named the Dad fire.
That same year, a city in Utah was aghast to find itself in the news because of its Dump fire, which, yes, started near a dump. Mark Christensen, city manager of Saratoga Springs, Utah, protested the name but was told that it could not be changed. “That is certainly not the image and marketing we are trying to project,” he told a Utah paper at the time. (There have, in fact, been Dump fires in other areas.)
Last month, two fires broke out around the same time in Butte County, California. One was on Starziak Lane. The other on Long Bar Road.
“It got very busy very quick because we had to start ordering aircraft,” recalled Matt McKenzie, a captain who has been with Cal Fire for almost 26 years. “So, in the back of the room, someone asked, ‘What do you want to name it?’ I didn’t want to make anyone say Starziak on the radio, so I just said, ‘Star.’ And then someone else asked about the other fire, and someone said, ‘Just call it Bar.’”
The problem with the simultaneous Star and Bar fires soon surfaced. “We didn’t really realize it until people in the field were like, ‘Which fire am I going to?’” McKenzie said.
Most names are ultimately of little consequence, the fires quickly contained and hardly known. For those that become unforgettable — well, there is no glory in naming disaster.
McKenzie was, in fact, the first on the scene of the 2018 Camp fire. But it was a dispatcher who named it after Camp Creek Road, unaware it would become the deadliest wildfire in California’s history.
The name elicited images of roasted marshmallows and singalongs, and many assumed it had been started by a campfire when it was actually caused by electrical transmission lines. Because it decimated the town of Paradise, some still refer to it as the Paradise Camp fire, a distinction that is upsetting to those in the nearby community of Concow, which was also devastated.
For fires that grow to hundreds or thousands of acres, the geographic significance of a name may become murky, said Rebecca Paterson, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management’s fire program.
“Certainly, there are going to be fire names that people will question down the line,” she said. “But it’s easy to have hindsight on things like that.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.