The Big Burn (August 20, 1910)

[Sequoia]

I was at the library in the teen section Saturday when I found this book on the rack. Even though it is about teens for teens it's well written and quite amazing. So today I do a Google search on it and it's the lead story in the August issue of Popular Mechanics. Considering the fire that's raging in Montana now it's just a reminder of how fire can take control of everything and everyone.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/I/515JT5S38NL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-dp-500-arrow,TopRight,45,-64_OU01_AA240_SH20_.jpg

The Big Burn is based on the true story of one of the worst wildfires of the century, a conflagration that destroyed 2.5 million acres of public land and killed 90 people. In the hot, dry summer of 1910, hundreds of small fires were burning all over Montana and the Idaho panhandle, lit by dry thunderstorms, sparks from trains, untended campfires. On August 20, a blowup began as the many blazes, pushed by wind, raced up the slopes until they joined to ignite a crown fire that roared across treetops, creating its own wind in a mighty inferno.

This novel tells the story of three pairs of young people in the fire's path: Ranger Samuel Logan and his 16-year-old brother Jarrett, who yearns to fight this fiery monster; Lizbeth, who loves the forest, and her aunt Celia, who wants only to profit from it; and two African American soldiers, honorable Seth and his shifty sidekick, Abel. The way their lives interlock with the fire and each other, and the "field notes" that document the course of the blaze make up a thrilling novel with much authenticity for the place and time and for the nature of wildfire itself

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The Big Burn: Idaho and Montana, August 1910
A rainless summer, bizarre winds and sudden lightning merged hundreds of fires into a great inferno, leaving firefighters to fend off the Big Blowup with buckets of water and their bare hands. By the time the second of our 10 Worst Disasters of the Century was put out, the wildfires had claimed 85 lives, but also sparked a debate over forest fires that burns to this day.

The men who heroically fought the wildfire ripping through 3 million acres of Idaho and Montana, late in August 1910, were up against a formidable enemy. "The forests staggered, rocked, exploded and then shriveled under the holocaust," wrote local historian Betty Goodwin Spencer. "Great red balls of fire rolled up the mountainsides. Crown fires, from 1 to 10 miles wide, streaked with yellow and purple and scarlet, raced through treetops 150 feet from the ground."

The speed of the inferno was both breathtaking and deadly. "You can't outrun wind and fire that are traveling 70 miles an hour," Spencer wrote. "You can't hide when you are entirely surrounded by red-hot color. You can't see when it's pitch black in the afternoon."

In contrast, summer that year seemed to drag on forever, slow-cooking the upper Rocky Mountains until they were dry as a desert. Along the Bitterroot Range that divides Montana and Idaho, the temperature in April was the highest on record. May was even hotter and drier. Barely an inch of rain fell on the forests in June, and none fell in July — this for an area that received up to 60 in. of rainfall a year on some mountains. As the hot, waterless stretch grew in length and intensity, the pine-green forests turned parched and brown.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/worst_case_scenarios/4219853.html

[Swede]

1. That sounds terrifying.

I'd never heard of this blaze before.

[Sequoia]

2. It was horrifying to say the least.

Can you imangine flaming pine trees getting sucked up by fire wind and hurling at you like spears? That's just one part of it. I lived up in Spokane, WA for a few years and would go throught that area on my way to Montana. Of course, it was so long ago and I didn't know about that fire then.