Mann Gulch fire
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The Mann Gulch fire of 1949 occurred when a wildfire in the Helena National Forest, Montana, United States, spread out of control and ultimately claimed the lives of 13 firefighters.
The fire was spotted by a forest ranger around noon on August 5, 1949. James O. Harrison, the recreation and fire prevention guard for Meriwether Canyon Campground had given up his former job as a smokejumper to find a less dangerous profession. On this day, however, he fought the fire on his own for four hours before he met the crew of smokejumpers who had been dispatched from Missoula, Montana, in a C-47.
Foreman Wagner Dodge led the team towards the Missouri River. The fire, however, spread faster than anticipated and had already cut off the path to safety. The men had to turn around. When Dodge realized that they would not be able to outrun the fire, he started an escape fire and ordered everyone to lie down in the area he had burnt down. The other team members hurried towards the ridge of Mann Gulch instead. Only two of them, Bob Sallee and Walter Rumsey, managed to escape through a crevice and found a safe location, a rock slide with little vegetation to fuel the fire. Two other members survived with heavy injuries and died within a day. Unburnt patches underneath the bodies indicates that the rest of the team, including Jim Harrison, suffocated before the fire caught up with them.
450 men fought for five more days to get the fire, which had spread to 18 km² (4500 acres), under control.
Wagner Dodge survived unharmed and died five years later of Hodgkin's disease.
Lessons learned from the Mann Gulch fire had a great impact on firefighter training.
The Mann Gulch fire was the subject of Norman Maclean's book Young Men and Fire[1], winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction in 1992. James Keelaghan later wrote a song about this fire entitled "Cold Missouri Waters" after being inspired by Maclean's book. Norman Maclean's son, John N. Maclean wrote an article in 2004 in which he interviews the last remaining survivor of the fire, Bob Sallee and corrects some of the mistakes in his father's book.[1]
[edit] See also
[edit] External resources
- Maclean, Norman (1992). Young Men and Fire. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-50061-6.[2]
- Rothermel, Richard C. (May 1993). Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn't Be Won. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station, General Technical Report INT-GTR-299.
- Turner, Dave. Spring 1999. "The Thirteenth Fire". Forest History Today.
- Weick, Karl E. (1993). "The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster". Administrative Science Quarterly 38: 628–652.
- Wildland Fire Accident Virtual Site. Extensive, many photographs. http://www.manngulchfire.com/
[edit] References
- ^ Maclean, John N. (2004). "Fire + Ashes: The Last Survivor of The Mann Gulch Fire". Montana: The Magazine of Western History 54: 18–33. Retrieved on 2006-10-25.
