JACKSON, Wyo. — Ever wondered how wildfires get named? Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF) Public Affairs Officer Mary Cernicek answered Buckrail’s burning questions, like how did last year’s Kitten Fire get that name?
In general, the group that makes the initial response to a wildfire gets naming rights; that could be a local firefighting team or a squad from the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). The incident commander on scene will often use a nearby geographical feature to describe the fire, but is not bound by any official naming rules.
“Typically our firefighters will choose a name that is unique, concise and references the fire’s location,” Cernicek said last year. “The responding firefighter usually will first suggest a name to the interagency fire dispatcher, who passes it along in fire reports, dispatches and so on.”
From there, a dispatcher will tell the firefighter if the chosen name sounds too similar to another name currently in use. If a fire occurs in a place where there are few landmarks to choose from, the name might become a sequel, for example: Clear Creek Fire and Clear Creek 2.
If multiple fires are burning in the same general area, the whole set can be referred to as a “complex” with a single name, such as the August Complex fire in California in 2020.
As for last summer’s Kitten Fire, Cernicek said that it was located near Wildcat Ridge and Wildcat Peak, in an area known as Kitten.
Cernicek also said that each wildfire receives a unique alphanumeric code used by both local and national firefighting agencies. The Horse Fire in 2025, for example, had the code WY-BTF-002501. “WY” is the two-letter state abbreviation, “BTF” is a three-letter locality, “25” for the year and “01” because it was the first fire to occur on BTNF that year.
This article runs annually.
