APRIL 24, 2025 | FEATURES | By Sydney McGarr (News Editor)
Wondering what journalism and wildfires could possibly have in common? Ask any student who spent Block 7 in the classroom with Professor Corey Hutchins.
As one of those students, I now know more than I ever planned to about how to activate an emergency fire shelter in a matter of seconds, how to dig a fire line to stop a controlled burn and, unexpectedly, how to fight off a mountain lion with a stick if necessary.
All of these skills came from the pinnacle of the Block: a three-day overnight trip to Colorado Firecamp in Salida, Colo., where we spent eight to 10 hours a day training to fight wildfires.
After being convinced by my close friend Lorelei to join the class, even though I’ve completed my journalism minor and was effectively getting no credit for it, I thought I knew what to expect. I was wrong.
As it turns out, this class is super useful for anyone looking to pursue journalism in the West (me!). As Hutchins explained to us on our first day, the class was created because the journalism department noticed a pattern of recently graduated students getting hired at news outlets throughout the West and immediately being asked to cover wildfires.
As you can imagine, being the sole person responsible for reporting on the scene of a chaotic wildfire isn’t an easy task. We even got to speak with recent Colorado College alumni and previous Catalyst editor-in-chief Zeke Lloyd, who currently covers wildfires for The Montana Free Press, about how difficult it is to jump into reporting on the huge natural disasters. So, the Reporting on Wildfires class was born to prepare students for that exact reality.
Our class went on a total of four field trips: to Boulder to meet with an acclaimed wildfire journalist and author, to CSU Fort Collins to talk with wildfire scientists about current mitigation studies, to the Colorado State Capitol to discuss wildfire legislation with Governor Jared Polis and to the aforementioned Firecamp.
I could write a whole essay on each – I talked my mother’s ear off on the phone the whole block, but I’ll try to keep it to just the highlights.
Spending a day at the Colorado State Capitol and getting to meet with the Governor was a formative experience. My takeaways were as follows: you cannot wear jeans on the Senate floor. The Governor is quite good at dodging questions he doesn’t want to answer. And locating the bathrooms in the Capitol is a much more difficult task than you’d think.
In all seriousness, our trip to the Capitol allowed us to truly understand a day in the life of a political reporter and gave us a valuable chance to flex our reporting skills face-to-face with one of the most powerful political figures in the state. While we didn’t get many direct answers, we certainly learned a lot, but more importantly, I hope it reminded Governor Polis that young people are present, engaged and concerned with wildfire legislation.
The firecamp experience deserves its own article. We spent three days being trained on all things wildfires by a firefighter named Joe. We sat through many long PowerPoints in the barn (some mornings felt so lengthy that we carried the entire pot of coffee all the way from the main lodge so we could refill). We learned to roll out the firehose and learned that rolling it up requires more patience than some of us have. We were aggressively chased up the stairs to the gym by our fellow screaming classmates as we simulated getting into our fire shelters during an emergency fire situation. We held tight in those same fire shelters as Joe shook on the edges of them to make sure we were secure and shouted fire-related quiz questions to us as our ticket to leave the claustrophobic bags.
And on the last day, it finally happened. We literally set fire to two acres of private land in a controlled burn just outside of downtown Salida.
I could name ten thousand individual moments that defined this class. But I think if I had to boil it down to one, it would be staring at the 30-foot trees engulfed in flames, standing next to Corey. After close to a minute of silence, he turned to me and said, “I’m not really sure if this is normal.”
It was in that moment that I realized the true capacity of what we had gotten ourselves into. Even my professor wasn’t sure what the next steps were, exactly. We were all learning together. As I watched the flames engulf a telephone pole – the only part of that experience that wasn’t actually normal – and watched my classmate and best friend Michaela Ocko ‘27 put it out with a firehose, I could only really think one thing: I couldn’t get this experience anywhere but right here, at this sometimes crazy school.
So, I’m signing out from Block 7 with a wildland firefighter certification card that I may not ever use, and dozens of perfect party stories that I certainly will.