I am a fan of PBS and happened upon the listing for American Experience on January 22nd. American Experience reran their 2015 documentary on the Big Burn last night. I had watched it four years ago and enjoyed and watched it again last night. And I recorded it so I could watch it again. If you are accessing this post within a few days of January 23rd, you may be able to watch the stream on
PBS American Experience: The Big Burn, it takes about an hour. At some point PBS will deactivate the stream, but if you go to the link you may watch several clips from the documentary. The film is based on
Timothy Egan's book, The Big Burn which I just started to read.
The Big Burn is about the 1910 wildfires that hit the northern Rockies in the summer of 1910. It had been a very dry summer with prime conditions for wildfires. By early August, upwards of 2,000 wildfires were burning in the northern Rockies. On August 20th, hurricane force winds causing a big blow-up with the different wildfires merging and ultimately burning three million acres, killing 86 people including 78 firefighters. The United States Forest Service has a short write up of what they call
The Great Blowup of 1910 that you may find
here.
Updated on December 20, 2020: the video that I originally embedded here is no longer available.
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