Young Men and Fire

I have heard many times the story of men and women who died or were lucky to escape death when the fire they were sent to extinguish overran them.  Part of our wildland firefighter training each year includes the lessons learned from recent or old fatalities or near misses to fire.

I had never read anything from Maclean until this documentary of the Mann Gulch fire.  I enjoy his writing style, and I especially enjoyed the way he told this story – as one who had fought fire.  He was employed by the forest service in Montana in his youth and experienced battles with fire there.

The tragedy of the fire in Mann Gulch is dissected and examined from several angles in order to learn all that is possible as to how it happened - the painstaking study of documents related to the investigation, of the science related to fire and how it played a part that day, the two survivors who returned to the gulch to relive a terrible event in their lives.

The emotions I felt when the events were retold were powerful. I can only imagine what it must have been like. Near the end of the book we can catch a small glimpse: “When a firefighter is told to drop his firefighting tools he is told to forget he is a firefighter and run for his life.”