Talk:Marshall Fire

Requested move 31 December 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

2021–2022 Boulder County fires → Marshall Fire – Requested name is official, and in common use. Target is redirect to here. Evvekk (talk) 19:33, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: Editors are advised that this article's title was moved from 2021 Boulder County fire to 2021–2022 Boulder County fires at 16:55 on 1 January 2022.  P.I. Ellsworth &numsp;- ed.  put'r there 00:38, 2 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Support - Marshall Fire is the name assigned by the Boulder County Office of Emergency Management and is seeing widespread usage in the media. Additionally, based on a review of article titles linked in List_of_Colorado_wildfires, common practice appears to be to use the official fire name and not dates/location. Tristantech (talk) 20:24, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support Jeffrey Beall (talk) 22:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC).
 * Support All the news on Colorado NPR uses the name "Marshall Fire." Kdammers (talk) 23:43, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
 * Support per everyone else. Love of Corey (talk) 02:06, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Support per nom. Waddles 🗩 🖉 07:02, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Against A second fire called the Middle Fork Fire broke out north of Boulder on the same day. This fire got considerably less media coverage than the Marshall Fire because it didn't burn any structures. The current name allows for the inclusion of the Middle Fork fire, which by itself might not be notable enough for its own article. Additionally, the Disaster Management WikiProject has proposed a standard naming convention of disaster-related articles as < > < > < >. I support this proposed naming convention because fires can be given the same name by the media (ironically, there another "Middle Fork Fire" already occurred in 2020), whereas the proposed naming convention would guarantee a unique page title for all current and future fires that may receive an article. The proposed naming convention is also more friendly to international readers who may not be familiar with the local colloquial name given to a fire, the proposed naming convention is clear to international readers what the article is about. Codered999 (talk) 11:48, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose It's a bit early to make a definitive common name argument when the event was only two days ago, so I'd advise holding off on any rename in the early days, as we observe what develops more broadly and beyond the local wall-to-wall media coverage. The official name by the local fire authorities, given by the initial fire dept. commander who shows up to any wildfire, is not necessarily the name that will meet the Wikipedia common name standard for article titles.  Also, there were two Boulder County Fires during this high wind time: the Middle Fork Fire and the Marshall Fire, both are good names for a wildfire being addressed by a local fire agencies, but are not nearly as good when an initial wildfire has spread to take out 600+ homes in two cities and cause multi-day evacuations of those cities.  This event has a while to run, and we'll see what it is called after the local media aren't just listening into to the emergency briefings and emergency management radio channels. — Preceding unsigned comment added by N2e (talk • contribs) 12:38, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose Was unaware of Disaster Management WikiProject naming convention. Proposed instead to pluralize the title to 2021 Boulder County fires.Evvekk (talk) 15:16, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose Have changed to opposing change to Marshall Fire, and instead agree that it should be Boulder County Fires, subdivided into Marshall Fire and Middle Fork Fire. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leavit2stever (talk • contribs) 18:19, 1 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Against: There is more than one fire happening, not just in Marshall. Dunutubble (talk) 18:22, 2 January 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose, readers will be confused by the very-non-specific name. They may look for (and expect) Colorado, or Superior, or Boulder, or Boulder County, but never Marshall. Abductive  (reasoning) 19:28, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Support The notable event is properly named the Marshall Fire. Any other fires in Boulder County in the two (!) years covered by the title are not nearly as notable as the seminal urban firestorm that was the Marshall Fire, and shouldn't even be significantly covered in this article, which will grow as we learn more of the causes, context and consequences. If we use a different broad title like 2021–2022 Boulder County fires, then every referring article that wants to talk about the notable event will have to add more text or a redirect name to be specific. ★NealMcB★ (talk) 04:49, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Support &mdash; Media is overwhelmingly referring to this as the Marshall Fire. — D. Wo. 22:22, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

2022 in name
2022 should not be in the title unless the fires are still ongoing today. Elijahandskip (talk) 18:54, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Concur. I don't see any clear sources indicating that the wildfires or structure fires are still ongoing.  N2e (talk) 05:54, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The ibox says they ended on 1 Jan, so they continued into 2022 for part of a day. Jim Michael (talk) 14:35, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I added that while I waited for replies here. Elijahandskip (talk) 14:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * The ibox now only says Dec 30. Was the fire restricted to that day? Jim Michael (talk) 15:57, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * @Jim Michael - The fire was extinguished overnight by snowfall. Dunutubble (talk) 18:36, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * It was only 62% contained as of Jan 1, with firefighting operations still ongoing, according to the Incident Management Team in charge of the fire Tristantech (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

no maps
Lots of data is available (smoke, satellite before/after, windgust strenght and direction), it should be possible to add some maps to illustrate the development and incredible speed of this fire. 2601:285:8180:1A10:0:0:0:3059 (talk) 00:37, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Underground coal fire being investigated as possible ignition source for Marshal Fire
According to the below article, a local underground coal fire that has been burning for years in the Marshall No. 1 and 2 coal mine is being investigated as a possible ignition source. It was the ignition source for a "...2005 brush fire that was sparked by a “hot vent” from the mine."

Underground coal fire being investigated as a potential source of ignition in fast-moving, destructive Marshall Fire by Kevin Vaughan and Jeremy Jojola, Channel 9 New, Boulder, Colorado. Paul H. (talk) 05:09, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 31 March 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Moved as requested Mike Cline (talk) 11:06, 13 April 2022 (UTC)

2021–2022 Boulder County fires → Marshall Fire – The most destructive fire in Colorado history should have its own article. Palpable (talk) 20:03, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Support The Marshall Fire was the most destructive fire in Colorado history. Cleanup and investigation are still underway. It is worthy of its own article. The only reason for the old title was that another small fire occurred on the same day. This second fire would not have been remotely newsworthy except that it was carried up in the news coverage about the Marshall Fire. All the significant facts in the article to be moved related to the Marshall Fire, because there was really nothing to say about the other fire. I would have just done the move myself, but there is a redirect from Marshall Fire to this article, which prevents the move for technical reasons. Palpable (talk) 20:12, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The current title just does not match the contents. 73.229.59.142 (talk) 11:43, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Article is unencyclopedic
For " the most destructive fire in Colorado history." (as stated in the lede), this article is remarkably full of newspaper info from the early days when it was a big clickbait story, and remarkably short of thoughtful encyclopedic contact from the weeks and months after the fire occurred. By months later, their should be published reports on actual insurance losses (the state regulator, or others); results of the "pending investigation" (mentioned in the article) as to the source of the fire; final tallies of injured/deaths/displaced person; post-disaster effect on the Denver residential housing quantity (adequate or not... price effect on rents); etc.

For such a major local disaster, the article is remarkably short of being a decent encyclopedic take on the event. N2e (talk) 16:02, 8 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Yes, the investigation is still dragging on. I check on it occasionally, the most recent news articles still say they will be done "soon". There will be lots of coverage when the report is released, I think it's better to wait than to point fingers prematurely.
 * I've been meaning to add a couple other sources relating to the weather that enabled the fire.
 * Haven't seen anything about price effects, the effect on supply is probably not that significant. You can probably find some sources about the wrangling over rebuilding, and I think there was the usual post-disaster argument over whether more strict building codes are too onerous. - Palpable (talk) 19:26, 8 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your solid response, Palpable. Agree that is prob best to wait until more info available.  Seems like you are monitoring the matter and the article will be improved when better sources are in. N2e (talk) 14:19, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

Facilitated Learning Analysis report
There is a lengthy new report about the fire from the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control: Marshall Fire Facilitated Learning Analysis. Note that this does not address the cause of the fire - that's still waiting on a report from the Boulder County Sheriff's Office. - Palpable (talk) 21:35, 28 October 2022 (UTC)