Katie Kemen

kkemen@gmail.com

In Young Men and Fire, author Norman MacLean attempts to piece together the fragmented and largely unknown story of the Mann Gulch, Mont., fire of 1949. His story is part history of the smokejumpers, who he chronicles, part history of the fire itself, and part account of his journey to discover the truth about this story.

MacLean begins with a description of the smokejumpers, a relatively new outfit in 1949. At the time, many of the smokejumpers were daredevils and bar rats who made extra money in the summer jumping out of planes and fighting fires. Their training was limited, they barely knew each other, and were mostly very young men (17-25 years old). However, with all these flaws, the smokejumpers made one of the greatest advances in fighting forest fires and markedly reduced the number of fires that were allowed to grow to dangerous proportions.

When the fire broke out on August 5, 1949, 15 smokejumpers were dropped into the steep and rocky Mann Gulch during record-breaking high temperatures. Their bad luck began from the start when their equipment landed far from the men. While the men were getting themselves together, the fire was growing and changing courses. Nearly as soon as the men started fighting the fire, their foreman, Wag Dodge, realized the fire was moving too fast and ordered his men to drop their tools and run for their lives.  By the end of the uphill sprint, only three survived.

Dodge was one of the survivors and the cause of the biggest controversy of the story.  As the men were sprinting up the steep incline he lit a fire in the shallow grass and when it burned out, ordered his men to lie in it where the main fire would have nothing left to burn. The young smokejumpers had never seen anything like this and didn’t understand his orders to lie down in the path of a forest fire. They kept running and soon died. Some claimed that the escape fire prevented their chance of escaping while others claimed it was ingenious and could have saved all their lives. 

Throughout MacLean’s investigation into the fire, he uses a wide variety of sources. In many instances, he begins with original documents, statements, and maps that were created in the days immediately following the fire by the Review Board. He uses these as starting points for further investigation, noting that the many emotions, personal motives for protecting reputations, time and the limited knowledge of fires in 1949 prevented one from taking these documents at face value. MacLean himself describes the difficulty of and slow progress in finding good data. He says,

So it had taken us three years to locate two places on the ground-a summer to discover whether any survivors still had addresses on this earth; then a winter to induce the two still alive to return to the top of the ridge they had been trying to forget…and then still another summer…to find out they had been successful in forgetting certain things (213).

MacLean visits the site of the fire several times to come to his own conclusions. He spends much time focusing on the timing of the men’s run uphill and the location of their bodies to investigate their chances of escaping alive. He uses statements from the survivors, maps, and even evidence from burned watches on victims’ wrists and personally times the men’s routes. In one trip he brings the two living survivors (Dodge had died shortly after the fire) back to the gulch to follow them as they retraced their escape from the fire.

MacLean also calls upon the help of old and new friends in the forest service. Laird Robinson, a Forest Service ranger, was his primary partner in the investigation. They contacted everyone from the postmistress in town, to W.R. “Bud” Moore, the director of Aviation and Fire Management for Region One of the Forest Service, to scientists at the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory to help them. These people were able to recover confidential files, explain mathematical fire “blow-up” equations, and even recreate the conditions of the Mann Gulch fire in controlled settings.

I believe that MacLean’s wide variety of sources and patience in gathering the evidence make his case very strong. Throughout, it is clear MacLean has painstakingly assembled the most thorough, unbiased, and current information possible to discover the truth of what really happened during the fire.

MacLean is able to explain very technical aspects of fires and firefighting in a way that makes them understandable to someone with limited knowledge in this area. I learned about the extensive work that goes into studying fires and how that translates into firefighting tactics. For example, Harry Gibson was a pioneering scientist in fire behavior science. His work observing fires from the 150 foot “weather tree” inspired others and eventually resulted in the development of three forest fire research laboratories in Montana, Georgia, and California, fully equipped with wind-tunnels and advanced computer technology. Each laboratory studies fire behavior pertaining to their location; the Montana location specializes in lighting fires and rough terrain, the type of fire that occurred in Mann Gulch. These laboratories have revamped the Fire Danger Rating System and have created fire behavior technology. Richard Rothermel, one of the scientists MacLean consults, was responsible for developing new training programs and implementing the Forest Service’s new fire policy, namely, fire management and control instead of fighting each and every fire.

I believe MacLean’s work does not make a major contribution to the field of public health; rather, he is the storyteller of those who did make the contributions. Halfway through his book MacLean asks 1) did this tragic fire improve scientific knowledge of fires to keep firefighters safer; and 2) did this fire improve training of firefighters to add to their safety? MacLean states that the fact that only two smokejumpers have died since the Mann Gulch fire suggests the world must have learned something from this tragedy. One visible change was the development of the Standard Fire Fighting Orders that are included in all forest firefighting training programs. Also, Dodge’s controversial escape fire became a permanent part of the training sessions for forest firefighters. Their escape fire also attracted the attention of prominent scientists and the resulted in great advancements in understanding forest fires.

The fire that occurred in Mann Gulch on August 5, 1949 was certainly a tragedy, but its effects brought about major changes in the safety and knowledge of the forest firefighting community. Of the immense impact of the deaths of those 13 smokejumpers of the Mann Gulch fire, MacLean says,

For those who crave immortality by name, clearly this is not enough, but for many of us it would mean a great deal to know that, by our dying, we were often to be present in times of catastrophe helping to save the living from our deaths (222).

Edition Cited:

MacLean, N. (1972) Young Men and Fire. Chicago. University of Chicago Press.