safety and new respect for wildfires

In all the reading that I have done to date about wildland fires, including a couple of blogs written by firefighters and (mostly) lurking on wildland fire (a website and discussion boards where wildland fire fighters –– and others –– hang out), there are two important points that I have come away with. One is the importance of the wildland fire fighter staying safe and the other is that fire is powerful and at times has a mind of its own.

I have written about safety here on this blog before, and I write about it again because it is something that I have seen stressed, in different ways, over and over again. I can talk about books, official investigative reports and other reports by fire researchers about wildland fires where fire fighters have died such as Mann Gulch (1949), Rattlesnake, South Canyon/Storm King, and the thirty–mile fire. Those are just the ones that I have read about. There are others that I have not read about. I will leave the analyses and comments on these analyses to those better able to speak to what went wrong in those fires where fire fighters died. What I can say is that reading about these deaths have given wildland fires a real and tragic face. So when I read posts on wildland fire where wildland fire fighters are either talking about safety or urging each other to stay safe, safety takes on a new meaning.

Related to safety, I think, is that I have come to see that fire is powerful, can be difficult to control, and at times can seem to have a mind of its own. I never did not respect fire, it is just that I have a great deal more respect for fire now than I did seven months ago.

All the more reason for wildland firefighters to stay safe and practice LCES:

Lookout
Communicate
Escape
Safety

Stay safe out there.