Big Blowup (cont.)
(l) Ed Pulaski a few weeks after the Blowup. Of his crew of 45 men, five died, four from asphyxiation in the mine adit. Overall, 78 firefighters died in six separate incidents.
(r) Many years later, dispatching a fire guard equipped with his eponymous tool, which he devised after the fire in his backyard forge.
Double post for a major fire event.
August 20, the anniversary of the Big Blowup, a catalyst for the American way of wildland fire.
(top) Post-season map of the 1910 season, with the Blowup circled in red.
(bottom) Photo of the mine adit where ranger Ed Pulaski held his crew at gunpoint.
Amid wildfires and political arson - a memento from a gentler fire era. A smokechaser lamp (yes, it works). What happens when a crew sits around the fire cache during a season-ending storm.
A couple of colleagues suggested I organize my scattered comments of this year's fires in the Northeast into a short (!) narrative. History News Network has graciously published it:
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/the-burned-over-districtPhoto: 1947 fires in Maine.
The Burned-Over District
The Northeast caught fire this fall, in a way that recalls its past. History has some lessons about how to manage the region’s fire seasons to come.
Very sad news. Dante Arturo Rodriguez Trejo has passed away. Indefatigable, ardent, encyclopedic in his fire knowledge, one of the founders of modern fire management in Mexico, and for me a friend as well as a colleague - Dante will be missed.
Photo from 2011 Coahuila fires.
Halloween is often associated with incidental fires from mischief or malice. But its origins mark it as one of Europe's great fire ceremonies, paired with Beltane in a pastoral almanac - spring and fall being the time for moving flocks and for burning. In the Celtic calendar it serves as a 'new fire' for a new year. Here's a passage from J.G. Frazer's Golden Bough:
So what was Prometheus thinking of? Aeschylus says the Titan's intention was "to cause mortals to cease foreseeing doom." So he gave two gifts - fire, which made possible "all the arts of man," and hope, which gave purpose to that power. Still a great tag-team.
This is nuttiness cubed. Yep, a patent for an artillery shell that explodes and sprays retardant. Maybe Boeing should concentrate on building planes that don't fall apart and spacecraft that don't maroon astronauts.
Another way to think about the
#Pyrocene. It's geology's version of Jurassic Park. We take something from tens of millions of years ago, release it in the present, and find a lot of unexpected consequences.
August 5 - the 75th anniversary of the Mann Gulch fire. The fire made Life Magazine and impacted many individuals, but had little institutional or social influence until Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire, posthumously published in 1992, connected wildland fire with the wider culture.
