UBC: Maclean, The Thirtymile Fire

[truepenny]

The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal by John N. Maclean

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Like Maclean's other books that I have read (The Esperanza Fire: Arson, Murder, and the Agony of Engine 57 and Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire) and, of course, his father's brilliant Young Men and Fire, the story of the Thirtymile Fire is the story of people doing the best they can in a tremendously dangerous situation, and what happens when, quite suddenly, "best" isn't good enough. Maclean is very good (and gets better from Fire on the Mountain through The Thirtymile Fire to The Esperanza Fire) at reconstructing the chain of decisions that resulted in catastrophe; both the South Canyon Fire and the Thirtymile Fire are histories of one tiny bad decision layered on top of another tiny bad decision until somehow you end up with dead firefighters. Only four people died in the Thirtymile Fire, but Maclean makes it clear that that was luck as much as anything else--luck and the random flukes of topography in the Chewuch River canyon.

It's sad and sobering how much of both the South Canyon and Thirtymile disasters were caused by bureaucracy, by resources (helicopters, tanker planes, etc.) that were available sitting unused until it was too late for them to do any good simply because nobody with the authority to do so ordered them out. A lot of decisions in modern wildfire-fighting get made by people who aren't on the scene, and that's necessary, but Maclean shows very clearly that it can also be dangerous right on up to lethal.



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Comments

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

by resources (helicopters, tanker planes, etc.) that were available sitting unused until it was too late for them to do any good simply because nobody with the authority to do so ordered them out

Reminds me of the Great Fire of London in 1666, which probably wouldn't have gotten so far out of hand if the guy with the authority to do so had ordered the people fighting the blaze to tear down houses for a firebreak. But he didn't want to answer to the property owners later, so he dismissed the fire as not a very big threat, and the result was that all those houses and a lot more besides burned down instead.

Of course, if you order a course of action like that and it fixes the problem, it's easy for people to say afterward that the problem wasn't really that bad and would have stayed small without your action.