HELL FIRES NOW -- HELL FIRES FOREVER?

JULY 1 2013

Forever?  Well, one can't help but wonder.

I was not surprised to learn early this morning of the death of the 19 firefighters in north/central Arizona.  It's a massive tragedy on lands I personally know and involving brave and committed younger people of the type with whom I grew up.  But given the increasingly savage and, at least by human ken, wildly unpredictable weather, I am surprised that the mortality rate has been as relatively low as it has -- with each fire season surpassing its predecessor in pure Horror.

In times now well past, I did a great deal of forest fire fighting in the Southwest -- including fire lookout work.  My first fire was in June, 1950, near my home town of Flagstaff.  The shadow of another fire tragedy the preceding year -- the Mann Gulch Fire in Montana -- was much on our minds.  As I've written on our now very large forest fire webpage:

Cowboying and coal mining -- and mining in general -- are all innately and extremely dangerous.  Anyone with any savvy at all about brush and forest fire control will put that 'way up high with those.  When I started in 1950, at sixteen [ostensibly eighteen], the horror of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire in the Helena National Forest, Montana, hovered over the entire Mountain West.  There, thirteen young men died -- essentially close together.  Norman Maclean, a fine writer and a great Westerner, wrote a hell of a good book about that colossal tragedy, "Young Men and Fire."  My son, John, gave it to me on my birthday, 1993.  Strongly recommended.  H.

In the summer of 1956, I fought two large forest fires in Northern Arizona,  Here, again via our webpage, is what almost happened to me on one of them.  Unlike the guys who died yesterday -- well trained -- and the equally savvy fighters of the long ago Mann Gulch burn, I was on a fire crew that had mostly "tenderfeet" types:

In situations like this, people are often hired off the streets to fight fire.  Some do it well and some don't.  In the summer of 1956, I was on a very large fire in yellow pine timber, a "burn" of about 9,000 acres as it turned out, in the Sitgreaves National Forest of Northern Arizona.  I was working building fire line with a Pulaski -- axe/hoe combo -- and had a gallon canteen of water for personal drinking.  Most of the 20 guys on my crew were "greenhorns" from the streets of Winslow.  Suddenly as I worked along, with a huge approaching wall of fire coming fast upon us, I looked around and realized my crew mates had all deserted, leaving me totally alone.  Spot fires -- from windblown sparks -- were developing all about me.  I had heavy logging boots, Levi pants and shirt, and my trusty Stetson hat, and, somewhat singed for sure, I barely escaped with my life and my Pulaski and canteen. When I saw some of the deserters on a far back logging road, several accusatory terms came to mind, but I settled on calling them all "jelly beans" -- an especially vile term in rural Arizona.  Most of them left the fire but I continued with another crew that was rushed in pronto -- and eventually we all stopped the inferno.

The second fire I fought in that summer of '56, was on the Prescott National Forest -- about a hundred miles west of Flagstaff.  And that was right in the general vicinity where the colossal tragedy of yesterday took place.  The turf is incredibly rough -- rocky, steep.  While there are some Yellow Pines (Ponderosa) and Cedars, there is massive brush -- Blackjack (scrub oak) and huge clusters of thorny Manzanita.  I've always remembered it as the toughest fire fighting turf I was ever on.  (It was also on this fire that a Forest Service official tried to make some of us wear metal safety helmets rather than our Stetsons.  We refused on the grounds that the "safety helmets" were encumbering and lacked the effective sweat bands which were supposed to keep sweat from our eyes.  Our Stetsons worked just fine and the official quickly backed down.  But today's fire fighters seem to me to be heavily -- and perhaps dangerously -- burdened  by too much official "protective" stuff.)

Finally, I wrote this yesterday on our situation here in Southeastern Idaho:

It's very hot here, 90s and sometimes 100 down in Pocatello -- but not exceptionally so as it is in regions further south and southwest. (Up where we live, it's always a little cooler, often with breezes.)  It's been a few days over a year since 66 homes burned up not far from us but, as yet, Idaho has had no serious fires.  That could change with thunderstorms (a big one here last night) replete with rain and myriads of lightning strikes.  The other day, fire control people were up here in our far corner for an hour or so scouting the turf and obviously getting set for possible defensive action.  We much appreciate that kind of sensible and timely forethought.  And we all up here have, of course, our own comparable approaches.  (Note: two smaller fires, some distance from us, did develop from that particular storm. They are now contained.)

For whatever reasons, I virtually never cry.  But that doesn't mean I lack a very heavy heart.  I didn't personally know the 19 martyr firefighters of yesterday.  But I do know who they are and where they come from.

http://hunterbear.org/forest_fires_in_the_west.htm

HUNTER BEAR

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO
www.hunterbear.org 
(much social justice material)

See the new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new substantial 
introduction by me. This book is a full, very detailed 
discussion of the rise and development of the Jackson  
Movement of 1962-63 -- external life and internal dynamics.  
And this book is also an organizer's how-to manual.
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

And see the related http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm 
 ("Militant and Radical Organizer": -- and also "Fifty Years:
Remembering Medgar Evers")
 http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/3876
 
See the Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
(Many photos.)

Our very large page on Community Organizing:  
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm