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English > Historical Fires > 1910 Fire Season
The Wild Frontier
Before there was such thing as forestry management in the United States, wildfires, like all of the other natural phenomena, were a natural occurrence, and they torched the forests. It has been estimated, that before any United States citizens had come to the west, it was common for 13 million acres of forest to become black, charred remains every year, as part of the natural fire cycle.
Around the 1850's, frontiersmen, or early settlers, started to quickly populate the western United States, and changing the ways of the people that were already there, the Native American Indians. The natives were very experienced in the forests that surrounded them, and understood the natural processes that happened, one of them being fire. It was actually common for them to light the underbrush on fire to help manage the forests, and prevent the fuel from piling up.
It was common practice in Europe, where the forests were already very depleted, to put out any fire that might destroy the precious resource. In addition to that, the climate is much wetter than the western United States, so fires weren't a large problem. These ideas were carried across to a different situation in the United States.
Experience, the Hard Way
Forest Management began as an idea in the United States, in the early 20th century. Theodore Roosevelt first established the Forest Service in 1905, to manage the national forests, with the goal of providing the nation with quality water and timber. In 1910, the hot political subject was conservation, and the best way that everyone felt they could conserve the forests, were to protect them from fire, a disaster that they saw solely as destroying their timber.
Although inexperienced, the Forest Service saw the signs of a bad fire season in 1910. It was hot and dry, and the fire season started early, and so the Forest Service knew that they had to act, and act fast. Thousands of men were brought out to fight the monster of fire. The only problem was that the monster they wanted to fight was more powerful than they had ever seen before.
As it became later in the fire season, into August, in Idaho and Montana, there just weren't enough people, equipment, experience, and communications to do anything about the fires that were burning up the precious forest. Then the wind came.
The Firestorm
The wind that the fire created blew down the trees before the fire even came through
Edward Pulaski
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On August 20, 1910, hurricane-force winds coaxed the previously moderate intensity fires, to combine together, into just a couple of blazing crown fires, many miles wide, and hundreds of feet tall, that raced through the forest, burning everything in sight. The day turned into night, as the smoke blanketed the whole countryside. A weather forecaster in Denver, Colorado, 800 miles (1,290 km) away from the fire, reported that in just 10 minutes, the temperature dropped 19 degrees, and at 5:00 p.m., a 42 mile an hour (68 km/h) wind burst into town, covering it in smoke from the fires.
The unsuspecting firefighters scattered throughout the forest were trapped wherever they went, and the only places they could find safety were either in mineshafts, or by soaking themselves, and laying down in streams and rivers. Some of the citizens in the small towns located in the area fled by train, or stayed in the houses, and lit backfires in desperation against the wall of flame marching towards them.
One story in particular, of Edward Pulaski and his 150 men, is very interesting. Pulaski had written that, "On Aug. 20, a terrific hurricane broke over the mountains… The wind was so strong it lifted men out of their saddles. The smoke and heat became so intense that it was difficult to breathe. Under such conditions, it would have been worse than foolhardy to attempt to fight the fire. I got on my horse and went where I could, gathering my men."
His men were spread throughout the forest, but he managed to gather up 45 of them, and coax them into a mineshaft. He did this by using his six shooters (guns), to force them into the shaft, because everyone was in a state of confusion and shock. Pulaski stayed up all night, keeping the timbers that held up the mine from burning, and kept his men alive. Luckily for his men, Pulaski was there to organize them, and tell them what to do, because they were not among the 78 firefighters that died. Pulaski went on to manage the forest that had burned that year, and later on, invented a tool that was called the Pulaski- it has an axe on one end, and a grubhoe (for digging) on the other. It is still used in modern fire line construction today.
The Aftermath
Scientists figured out that these incredible firestorms, which lasted two days, burned three million acres (they were stopped by a well-needed rain/snow storm). In just two days, the fires burned 4,700 square miles (7,400 square km), or approximately the size of Connecticut. The fires were known to go on runs of more than 50,000 acres (78 square miles, 126 square km), and throw fire brands, that would often start new fires, 10 miles in front of the fire. The winds blew at horrific speeds- up to 80 miles per hour (129 km/h), and these firestorms were producing the energy equivalent to a Hiroshima-type atomic bomb exploding every two minutes.
The amount of forest that burned was estimated to be an astounding 8,000,000,000 (8 billion) board feet of timber.
The fires of 1910 caused drastic changes in the policy that the Forest Service had, because everything had burned, and many people had lost their lives. They turned into a complete fire suppression mode, and put out any fire they could, until nature caught up with them again.
The Mann Gulch Fire >>
In Memoriam
For the 78 firefighters that died, and the 8 civilians that died, as a result of the firestorm in 1910.
© ThinkQuest Team C0119184 :: Credits & Sources
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