Perhaps you saw the movie, or if you are a reader, you read the book: A River Runs Through It. The author of that work also wrote an account of a forest fire that took the lives of 13 young men on August 5, 1949 at a place called Mann Gulch. The book is called: Young Men and Fire. I just finished reading it.
Earlier in October I was taking a class for my job in the fire service. NIMS 300 was the class. For the uninitiated it stands for National Incident Management System and it was the 300 series of the class. The instructor spoke of this book during the class, in the morning session. I happened to have my lunch with me that day and so did not anticipate going out to eat. I also happened to have my Kindle along as well and so at the break I bought the book and started reading!
Now, I am a structural firefighter. I know about wildland firefighting but only from books and textbooks. This was a fascinating account of the Mann Gulch fire that killed 13 young men in a matter of minutes. He carefully, almost reverently, takes apart this fire, the attitudes, the policies and the politics and lays them bare for all to see. It is an intriguing account written in the style you would recognize if you had read A River... This fire and the resulting deaths sent shock waves through the country and the Forest Service as well. The picture of these men, some as young as 19, one of them a veteran of Bastongne, fleeing before a 'blowup', a fire phenomenon not well recognized is poignant and touching, almost as if he were showing these young men what had happened to them. In doing this he also brings to us an encounter with our mortality. I really enjoyed it and recommend it to you, my reader.
No comments:
Post a Comment