Mann Gulch fire

The Mann Gulch fire was a wildfire started on August 5, 1949, in the Gates of the Mountain Wild Area, now named the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness, in Helena National Forest, in western Montana. A team of 15 smokejumpers parachuted in that afternoon. After joining up with a firefighter already on the ground, the 16 men were headed downhill to the river as a safe refuge because of increasing fire activity on the opposite, north-facing slope, but could not see for a time that the fire had spotted in front of them and had cut off their escape route, forcing them to turn back, uphill. The fire, meanwhile, began advancing on them rapidly, driven by up-gulch winds, and accelerated by the dry grass on the south-facing slope. Wind, slope, and fine fuel caused the fire to advance faster than they could retreat, and they were overrun. 12 smokejumpers and a ground-based firefighter were fatally burned. Two escaped unharmed by running up the fall line to a rock ridge where they found a crack through which they escaped. The foreman, Wagner Dodge, survived not by outrunning the fire, but by lighting an emergency backfire now known as an escape fire and jumping into the burned area, lying face down in the black while the main fire joined and passed around his flame front. He had ordered his men to follow but they refused and ran. The United States Forest Service drew lessons from the tragedy of the Mann Gulch fire by designing new training techniques and safety measures that developed how the agency approached wildfire suppression and emergency management. The agency also increased emphasis on fire research and the science of fire behavior. University of Chicago English professor and author Norman Maclean (1902–1990) researched the fire and its behavior for...