[bigskywalker]

CLICK HERE to access the blog and photo tour. Mann Gulch is about 20 miles north of Helena, Montana.

[John Morrow]

Great performance of a intense song about Mann Gulch:

Sadly, we have yet to find a way to prevent this history from repeating itself.

[djt]

Nice report, I enjoyed it. A few years back we went on the Gates of the Mountains boat tour. We didn't have the time to hike up to the site. Someday.

[ragman and rodman]

For anyone who has read Norman Maclean's book (Young Men and Fire) about the Mann Gulch tragedy, Maclean's son (John) wrote a book (Fire on the Mountain) in 1999 about Colorado's South Canyon Fire that occurred in 1994... 45 years after the Mann Gulch fire. The aspects of the two fires... including terrain, weather, human error and loss of life... are eerily similar... and if you happen to be a numerologist, eerie becomes eerie times ten.

[Pyrites]

At Fire School at Clarkia in the mid-70’s the instructors grabbed Mann Gulch as a documented case fatality fire. It’s the only one I remembered; probably as I’d heard of it before. The cautions to be aware of (lessons learned nowadays) were being above fire, without somewhere to run to (a famous FF’s Safety Zones now), steep, tall grass, or light cured, dry fuels, heat, low humidity, and especially intense down drafts at edge of thunderhead that crossed mouth of canyon as crew headed downhill. Discussion of crew organization I don’t remember. Dodge lighting his escape fire so there was black to get into was part of it. (Most of us carried a fusee. I cut two in half and threw the rest away. More important to get a light, not important to have twenty minutes.) Also mentioned if bugging out, and not just retreating a couple hundred yards, dump weight Right Now. And every person on crew had responsibility to make this call, not just crew boss. The USFS has an infinite amount of chainsaws, shovels, canteens and so on. You don’t need that apple or sandwich in your pack. Of course after revisiting tragedy at MacLean’s insistence the new conclusion was that the thunderhead that no one ever saw never existed. This was supposed to be the core event that crew had not accounted for fast enough.

[Dick B]

The '94 South Canyon fire, also known as the Storm King Mtn fire, happened near Glenwood Spgs, CO. It took the lives of 14 fire fighters. It hit home especially hard here in Central Oregon as 9 of the ones lost part of a hotshot crew from Prineville. I had heard that for the first 2 days the fire only covered about 3 acres, and a local fire department wanted to send a crew in to put it out, but the agency in charge would not allow it. Tragic.