in the summer of 2002, when the hayman fire and coal seam fire ravaged much of western colorado, owens made perhaps the first major press faux-pas of his tenure. responding to a reporter's question following an aerial tour of the fires (“what does it look like up there?”), owens said “it looks as if all of colorado is burning today”. many western slope residents blamed owens for driving away tourists with the press's truncated version of the quote (“all of colorado is burning”).