[Vision2020] The Centenary of the Big Fire of 1910 in Northern Idaho

[nickgier at roadrunner.com]

Greetings:

For the 100th anniversary of the largest forest fire in U.S. history I chose to write about my three summers as a forest fire fighter. This was my radio commentary for the week and will appear in the Idaho State Journal this weekend.

Check out the attached PDF version for my failure as a hermit-yogi on Mt. Zion on the Olympic National Forest; my chain saw stuck in a flared-up snag then running down the hill (except the chain and bar)as a molten mass; and then, afraid that a killer tree was going to get me, handing over my saw to my assistant "Beetle Bailey" during my last week of work.

Next week I'll have a few choice words to say about Glenn Beck grandstanding on the sacred ground on which MLK stood.  If Imam Rauf has to move his cultural center, why didn't Beck move the date of his rally?  He claims that it was divine providence, but couldn't Rauf say the same?

I continue to fear for my country and Sarah Palin needs locution lessions,

Nick

MY SUMMERS AS A FOREST FIRE FIGHTER:
On the Centenary of the Big Fire of 1910 in Northern Idaho

As I gathered material for writing about the Big Fire of 1910 in Northern Idaho, I was disappointed that there have not been that many fires this season. It was as if we had to have a very bad fire season to commemorate the centenary properly. 

I remember that everyone on my three fire crews had this perverse wish that the forests would be aflame everywhere.  I imagine that some soldiers might the same way about the lack of combat action after years of training and boot polishing.  

Each of my crew bosses had been army sergeants, so I consider my three summers under their command as almost the equivalent--in terms of discipline and danger--of military duty.

Lots of fires meant hard work but good money, and my paychecks were directly deposited to my graduate school savings account. When we got the call and loaded up in the C-47s, our spirits were high and our excitement continued even after days of 12-hour shifts.  Only on about the fourth day of “mopping up” did we get bored and wanted to return to our base.

One hundred years ago last month, Ed Pulaski, a ranger in Wallace, Idaho, had only two hundred men to patrol the ten miles of fire lines they had dug around the fires in their district.  Idle men in Wallace refused to heed Pulaski’s call to join the battle.

On August 20 the weather changed dramatically, and Pulaski found himself and 45 men running from an intense crown fire. They took refuge in a mining tunnel where five died of smoke inhalation.  The survivors stumbled into Wallace the next day. 

The hurricane-force winds of August 20 created a firestorm that consumed 3 million acres. Over the course of three days, eight towns burned to the ground and 87 people died. It is still the largest, but not the deadliest, fire in U.S. history.

In the summer of 1965 I joined a 12-man regional fire crew at Toketee Ranger Station in Southern Oregon.  Every afternoon we watch the thunderheads build up in the east and we would drive wildly after the lightning strikes, but only one tree was ignited.  

The 1965 fire season was a slow one. Our only major fire was a 1,000-acre blaze on the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and nearly every crew in the West was there to get some experience.  It was on this fire that I saw a helicopter go down, killing the three men on board.

In the summer of 1968 I joined the interregional 25-man crew stationed at Big Smokey, north of Twin Falls on the Sawtooth National Forest. We had a very busy summer fighting fires from the Wenatchee National Forest all the way down to the Coronado National Forest on the Mexican border.  

My last season fighting fires was on the Rogue River National Forest. The 25-man crew was stationed just 20 miles south of Crater Lake National Park. During August of 1969 we spent over two weeks on Washington’s Okanogan National Forest. 

One day at dusk our crew was ferried in by helicopter to a point above a small fire 500 feet below us.  Going against basic rules of forest fire fighting, we were ordered to hike down to the fire (never do this!) and to start digging our line.  A night wind kicked up and we barely made it to safety at the helipad above us. 

As I read about forest fires these days, I'm struck by at least two things.  First, the crews these days take far more safety precautions that we did. We did have basic fire safety lessons, but the only special equipment we had was orange, fire-proof shirts.  We didn't have any of those fire tents that are now standard issue.  

The second thing that has changed is that we rarely encountered structure fires, except for a few cabins and corrals. Now it seems that nearly every forest and range fire report contains news about homes being threatened or destroyed.  

Most August skies in my hometown of Moscow are obscured by smoke, and our raft trips on Idaho's rivers are sometimes spoiled by smoke in the canyons.  My son-in-law called from Edmonton to say that smoke from fires in British Columbia, 350 miles away, lay heavily over the city. 

We hear in the news that people are suffering from a dense, deadly haze in Russia.  The Russians are now experiencing the equivalent of Idaho's 1910 holocaust. As of August 12, over 26,000 fires have consumed 1.9 million acres and have destroyed 2,000 homes.

I urge both fire fighters and soldiers to suppress their natural desire for excitement and extra wages and be content with the good fortune of fewer fires in our forests and even fewer fire-fights in trouble spots around the world.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.


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