The Mann Gulch fire of 1949 was a wildfire in the Helena National Forest, Montana, United States, which claimed the lives of 13 firefighters including 12 smoke jumpers who were parachuted into the area to fight the fire, but were unable to control it.
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The fire started when lightning struck the south side of Mann Gulch, in an area named by Lewis and Clark in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness. 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.
After the smokejumpers had landed and gathered together, Foreman Wagner Dodge went off to scout the fire status while the remainder of the team ate. When he returned, Dodge told the team to get on the North side of the gulch and 'sidehill' (keep the same contour) and move "down gulch" towards the Missouri River, because they could then fight the fire from behind it. Dodge stopped to eat and to discuss additional plans with Harrison, who knew the local terrain well. He noticed however that the smoke was starting to boil, and he became concerned. He decided to rejoin his men as quickly as possible and get them out.
By that time, the fire had jumped the gulch from the south side to the north side, downgulch from the men. It had 'blown up', spreading much faster than anticipated, due to various weather and environmental conditions. This was unknown to the crew because various ridges running down the slope obscured their view of the slope. Only when they came over a ridge did they see the huge fire coming at them, only a few hundred yards distant. The men had to turn around and run for it. Soon after, Dodge ordered them to drop their heavy tools (shovels, Pulaskis, saws).
When Dodge realized that they would not be able to outrun the fire, he started an escape fire, taking a match and burning an area of grass to lie in so that the fire would burn around him and his crew. He ordered everyone to lie down in the area he had burnt down. In the book that he later wrote, he claimed that he had been "lifted off the ground" several times by the fire. He later claimed he had never heard of such a fire being set, it just seemed "logical", and it was thought to be an on-the-spot invention. However, plains Indians had used the technique to escape grass fires and it had been written about by authors in fiction stories in the 1800s, e.g. James Fenimore Cooper (1827) in The Prairie.
However, it is unknown if the crew heard or understood him. The group had spread out while running to escape the fire and was strung out along a good stretch. The noise of the fire had also become intense by that time. The 'escape fire' technique had not been part of their training. Dodge later stated that someone said, "The hell with that, I'm getting out of here". The other team members hurried towards the Mann Gulch ridge, hoping they had enough time to get over the ridge to safer ground; though fires spread quickly uphill towards a ridge, they are significantly slower coming down the other side.
Only two of them, Bob Sallee and Walter Rumsey, managed to escape through a crevice, came to the other side of the ridge in Rescue Gulch, and found a safe location, a rockslide with little vegetation to fuel the fire. Diettert had been close behind Sallee and Rumsey, but he did not go for their crevice, for unknown reasons. The two had no way of knowing if the crevice actually 'went through' so it was lucky that they survived. Two other members initially survived with heavy injuries, but died within a day. Unburnt patches underneath the bodies indicate that the rest of the team, including Jim Harrison, suffocated before the fire caught up with them.
Everyone had jumped by around 4:10 pm. The scattered cargo had been gathered at about 5:00 pm. At about 5:45 pm, the crew had seen the fire coming up towards them on the North slope and had turned to run. By 6:00 pm, the fire had swept over them. The time of the fire was judged by wristwatches stopped by the heat.
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.
Thirteen crosses were erected to mark the locations where the thirteen firefighters who died fighting the Mann Gulch Fire fell. However, one of the smokejumpers who died in the Mann Gulch Fire was David Navon, who was Jewish. In 2011 the cross marking the location where Navon died was replaced with a marker bearing a Star of David[1]
Several months following the fire, fire scientist Harry Gisborne, from the US Forest Service Research Center at Priest River, came to examine the damage. Having a history of heart problems, he nevertheless conducted an on-ground survey of the fire site. He suffered a heart attack and died while finishing the day’s research.
Gisborne had forwarded theories as to the cause of the blowup prior to his arrival on site. Once there, he discovered several conditions, which caused him to change his concepts of fire activity particularly those pertaining to fire "blow-ups". He noted this to his companion just before his death on 9 November 1949.
There was some controversy about the fire, with a few parents of the men trying to sue the government. One charge was that the 'escape fire' had actually burned the men.
Lessons learned from the Mann Gulch fire had a great impact on firefighter training. However, some of the lessons were forgotten and the tragedy would be repeated in the South Canyon Fire of 1994, in which 14 firefighters died.
Several factors described in Norman MacLean's book Young Men and Fire are described that combined to create the disaster.
The Mann Gulch fire was the subject of Norman Maclean's book Young Men and Fire,[2] which was published after Norman Maclean's death. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award for non-fiction in 1992. John Maclean's 2003 book, Fire and Ashes: On the Front Lines Battling Wildfires, also includes a section on the Mann Gulch Fire, and John Maclean published an article in 2004, adapted from that section of the book, in which he interviewed the last remaining survivor of the fire, Bob Sallee.[3]
James Keelaghan wrote a song about this fire entitled "Cold Missouri Waters" after being inspired by Young Men and Fire. The song was covered by Richard Shindell, Dar Williams, and Lucy Kaplansky on their album Cry Cry Cry. It was also covered by Hank Cramer in his album, Days Gone By. It is sung from the perspective of foreman Dodge, lying on his deathbed dying of Hodgkin's disease five years after the fire. It imagines Dodge saying of his decision to set the escape fire:
"I don't know why, I just thought it. I struck a match to waist-high grass, running out of time. Tried to tell them, 'Step into this fire I set. We can't make it, this is the only chance you'll get.' But they cursed me, ran for the rocks above instead. I lay face down and prayed above the cold Missouri waters."
Ross Brown, a musician/songwriter from Townsend, MT (about 35 miles south of Helena) wrote another song entitled "The Mann Gulch." A scratch version of this song is available on YouTube.
Donald Berwick provides a very interesting perspective on an "Escape Fire" with respect to safety in healthcare: http://itunes.apple.com/au/book/escape-fire/id411946213?mt=11