Loren Elliott / New York Times
The Park Fire burns along a hillside near Lomo, Calif., on July 28, 2024. It took only a week for the Park Fire to grow into the fifth-largest in California history, signaling the potential for a destructive wildfire season across the western United States.
Monday, Aug. 5, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Based on its name, you might assume 2018’s Camp fire was started by a few errant embers from an unattended campfire.
But that’s not what sparked the deadliest wildfire in recorded California history.
Instead, Pacific Gas & Electricity power lines in the high hills of Butte County ignited the 153,336-acre wildfire that destroyed nearly 19,000 buildings and killed 85 people, state fire officials determined.
So how did the Camp fire get its name? A dispatcher named the wildfire after Camp Creek Road, where it originated, SFGate reported in 2018.
Here’s how California wildfires get their handles.
How did the Park fire near Chico get its name?
The Park fire started on July 24 off Upper Park Road in Upper Bidwell Park east of Chico, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Its name comes from its proximity to the park and the road that runs by it.
As of Friday evening, the arson-sparked wildfire had burned more than 399,000 acres in Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama counties, Cal Fire said, and destroyed a total of 542 structures.
One person has died so far as a result of the blaze.
The Park fire, which was 24% contained as of Friday, has surpassed 2020’s SCU Lightning Complex as the fourth-largest fire in California history.
Who names wildfires in California?
Typically, naming a wildfire is the job of the dispatch center that sends the initial responders to the fire.
Sometimes the first firefighters on the scene give a blaze its forever name.
According to Cal Fire, fires are traditionally named based on their location in reference to nearby streets, road signs, landmarks or geological features such as creeks, lakes, hills and mountains.
“Quickly naming the fire provides responding fire resources with an additional locator, and allows fire officials to track and prioritize incidents by name,” Cal Fire said.
It also helps dispatchers, community members and the media keep track the blazes.
“This convention has led to some memorable names,” CBS News reported recently, such as the 2014 Butts fire near Lake Berryessa — named after Butts Canyon Road.
The biggest wildfires to break out in California so far in 2024 have names ranging from the obvious to the obtuse: Hill fire, Pedro fire, Vista fire and so on.
As its name suggests, the 2024 SQF Lightning Complex is actually a trio of smaller fires — the Trout fire, the Long fire and the Borel fire — that ignited after a lightning storm in Sequoia National Forest, according to Cal Fire.
The Lake fire in northern Santa Barbara County started near Zaca Lake, and the Shelly fire in Siskiyou County sparked in the Marble Mountain Wilderness near Shelly Lake.
However, the Nixon fire in Riverside County has only a tenuous connection with former U.S. President Richard Nixon.
It broke out at Tule Valley Road and Richard Nixon Boulevard in Aguanga.
Are there rules about names for wildland fires?
The National Interagency Fire Center has some guidelines for naming wildfires. They include:
—Don’t name a fire after a person
—Don’t use the names of private companies or private property
—Don’t include words like “dead man”
—Don’t name a fire after another catastrophic fire
—Don’t use puns or other “cute or funny” fire names
—Avoid referencing any ethnic, religious or political groups
What happens if firefighters can’t think of a name?
In 2015, Idaho firefighters who had already battled a series of smoke starters were stumped when it came time to find a creative name for a new blaze.
It became known as the Not Creative Fire, National Public Radio reported at the time.
Not everyone is satisfied with the naming conventions for wildfires.
When the Dump fire broke out in 2012 near a landfill in Saratoga Springs, Utah, city officials and community members were quick to protest the name.
“As a city we were frustrated by it,” Saratoga Springs city manager Mark Christensen told the Deseret News in 2012. “That is certainly not the image and marketing we are trying to project for our city.”
The same year, a blaze broke out in North Carolina on Father’s Day.
Its name? The Dad fire.
The significance of a wildfire’s name can become murky over time, according to Rebecca Paterson, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management’s fire program.
“Certainly, there are going to be fire names that people will question down the line,” Paterson told The New York Times in July. “But it’s easy to have hindsight on things like that.”
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