 I'm poking the forest fire preventing bears with a mighty important message for you. It's very rare in history that you have one kind of originating moment. In a way it's a kind of creation story for explaining who we are. In the spring of 1910, the earth passed through the tail of Haley's Comet. The comet's appearance in the sky seemed to foreshadow the deadly summer of fire that would engulf the northern Rockies. No amount of money, equipment or firefighters could stop the hurricane of fire that raged out of control on August 20th and 21st, 1910. The big blow-up would be the catalyst of wild and fire suppression for the next 100 years. On August 20th, a terrific hurricane broke over the mountains. They picked up the fires and carried them for miles. The wind was so strong that it almost lifted man out of their saddles and the canyons seemed to act as chimneys through which the wind and fire swept at the roar of a thousand freight trains. Ranger Ed Pulaski. In the years before the big blow-up, President Theodore Roosevelt was helping to put conservation on the national agenda. He protected millions of acres in national reserves, monuments and parks. In 1905 he appointed his friend Gifford Pinchot as chief forester of the newly minted U.S. Forest Service. Many accused the president of pushing his agenda too fast. Senator Haberman was always after Roosevelt, as were most of western senators. They just couldn't stand the Forest Service, but more than anything else, more than anything else, they were against the idea of national forests. The railroad were given more than 35 million acres for free in an area about the size of New England. The Rockefeller family, which is building the biggest and most expensive transcontinental railroad in history, right through the heart of the Bitterroot Mountains, right where the fire takes place. And then you have the Guggenheims and E.H. Harriman and James J. Hill and the Warehouses, families that are largely known to us today probably only for their philanthropies. But then they were at the peak of their gilded age power and they wanted this land because they were used to getting it for free. Roosevelt took it out of the general public domain and put it in the protectorate of the Forest Service. The forest was to be the people's land, the people were going to use it. Yale School of Forestry had opened, graduated its first class in 1904. 1905, the Forest Service gets control of the national forest. Gifford Pinchot quickly hired the kids from Yale to be the boots on the ground as rangers for the Forest Service out west. All of the young men looked up to Pinchot. He rallied their spirits about conservation, urging them to be part of the great crusade, as he called it. He was named Gifford Pinchot and they were called little Gifford Pinchots or little GPs. They came out of Yale and they were just infused with this idealistic image of the great crusade, this idea of conservation. In order to become a forest ranger, one had to have many skills. First, they had to be able to write legible reports in order to keep Congress informed of their findings. Pinchot also required rangers to pass a test of outdoor survival skills. The test lasted two days and was comprised of navigation, horse handling, firefighting and cooking. Pinchot said one test was to cook a meal, the other was to eat it. They needed these skills and more to survive because they would be patrolling areas with names like the High Lonesome and the Badlands. Not to mention dealing with the Wild West towns where some people would prefer to kill you over a drink rather than to buy you one. These people could not have been more out of place there. These Yale trained foresters in the Deadwood United States of the West. These young forest rangers would go out west and they would find brothels and saloons. Want to buy a lady a drink? One ranger referred to Taft Montana as the wickedest place in America. The one town of Taft Montana named for the 350 pound president had three prostitutes for every man and a higher murder rate than New York City. Fittingly, a ranger recruiting poster warned, invalids need not apply. The most successful firefighting organization was probably the U.S. Army. And they set a pattern of firefighting that in some ways is still with us. That was established in 1886 when the cavalry took over Yellowstone National Park. They were greeted by fires when they rode in. They put out 60 fires that summer. That became a kind of ideal model. The Army had numerous advantages over the Forest Service when it came to fighting fires. The amount of land to patrol for fire in the parks comprises a fraction of the acreage that lies within the forest boundaries. Forest Service Rangers had to plan accordingly. They recognized that you had to control the fires while they were small. So they had to try to find them. They had temporary lookouts. They had telephones, telegraphs. They would try to find fires, send people out. It could take several days to reach a fire. In a remote area, there might not be any trails. Any obvious route in. You're just bushwhacking through the smoke trying to find this thing. There were no trails or roads, and we had to go in 65 miles. One spent the first week trying to get to the fire. It took more time to get into the country than to put out a small blaze. Ranger Joe Holm. In 1910, Roosevelt was out of office. Succeeded by President William H. Taff. Opponents of Roosevelt's and Penchot's conservation efforts wielded great influence in Congress. They moved quickly to cut off funding to the fledgling Forest Service. The Speaker of the House, Joe Cannon, said not one cent for scenery. So there was a huge culture war going on. Penchot and new Secretary of Interior Richard Ballinger disagreed publicly on forest policy. Penchot, pushing his limits, arranged for a letter to be read in Congress, criticizing the President for misinterpreting Ballinger's policies. This was the final straw for President Taft. He fired Penchot for insubordination. It should have been a debate about policy. What's the best way to manage fire and protect these lands and communities from fire? Got sidetracked into a battle about politics. Whose view of land management and the role of government will prevail. So the fire thing wasn't finally about fire. It becomes, it's remade into a polarizing political spectrum. You're either with Ballinger or you're with Penchot. You're either with limited government and land management or you're with very active government and wholesale commitment to it. You're either with sort of folk knowledge and the Indian way of burning the landscape or you're with professional forestry and the kind of academic heft that that brings with it. You're forced to choose and that was, well, that's very effective politics. It forces people to choose, but it doesn't make good policy because there were really a whole array of things and there were probably different choices that were necessary for different regions. The fires of 1910 were not unique in U.S. history for their size. There had been huge fires before. In 1825, over 3.5 million acres burned in the northeast, setting into motion a century of very large lethal fires that would follow settlement. During October of 1871, the Pestigo fire burned across northeastern Wisconsin. Spot fires started 10 miles away after jumping over parts of Lake Michigan. The fire ultimately covered one and a half million acres, burned down 16 towns and killed more than a thousand people. So we have a whole backdrop of these. 1910 fires really fit into that larger chronicle. What makes them different is that this was not a settlement fire as such. That these were fires that were raging in areas that had been set aside and had been set aside in large order to protect them from the axe and fire, as the phrase went. They didn't recognize lightning as a problem, partly because they weren't concerned about fires in many of these remote areas. And in many areas, the fire's people overwhelmed the lightning. In other words, you didn't see it because the amount of human burning. So it was not in a sense until they removed people as that ignition source that they began to realize, yeah, lightning accounts for a lot of these fires. And at that point, 1910 does mark the transition. A big fire, but of a different sort, not one set as a result of settlement, land clearing associated with logging and agriculture, but fires for a variety of reasons were being set on forest reserves and hence would be fought. 1910 started with plenty of snowfall in the northern Rockies. Lookout pass held snow well into spring and Placer Creek was flowing strong. But the moisture from the sky abruptly stopped. In April, Glacier National Park reported their first fire and drought began to settle over the area. Storm systems would roll through with the promise of bringing needed rain, but instead they only packed lightning. This was part of a vast complex of fires that swept over the northwestern U.S. There were large fires throughout the west. Most of it was concentrated in the northwest, especially in the northern Rockies, extending well into Canada. Let's take a tip from our Canadian friends. When we go out into the woods, let's be extra careful with fire. Ah, the West West, don't be on the West West. Ah, the West West, don't be on the West West. The 1910 fire season would be so severe the Forest Service asked the Army to provide assistance. Most of the standing Army in the northwestern United States was called out to fight the firemen. They were an important presence. The Forest Service would rely heavily on mining and logging crews who had experienced fighting fire and working hard as a team. Another makeshift Army of temporary laborers had to be employed as emergency firefighters. This was a real cross-section of American frontier life and working class. Large numbers were immigrants. It was a huge period of immigration into the U.S. Many of them were people who just did unskilled labor on railroads and mines or random agricultural work. There were gangs of people that could be dragged out of saloons. They would then be organized much as they would before laying track on a railroad or building a trail to a mine or some other practice. That's why all those people are living in those brothel-ridden saloon towns because they've just put this railroad together. Howdy strangers, staying long? Communication on the fire lines was difficult at best. In one instance, a whole crew walked off the fire line because they thought the boss was not a union sympathizer. Rumors spread through the press that many of the temporaries were starting fires themselves in order to stay employed. Army soldiers would spread out within a fire crew full of laborers to try and keep some sort of order on the line. There's one reason why agencies like the Forest Service continually looked to the Army for help. They wanted some kind of discipline. The Army wasn't necessarily good at digging trenches and throwing dirt, but at least they could obey orders. At Pulaski, it'd gone west like many before for adventure and fame. It became a minor in the region, northern Idaho primarily. In 1980, it was hired by the expanded Forest Service as a ranger in Wallace, Idaho. He knew the area, knew most of the people. He was an older guy. He was about 40, much older than many of the real youngsters who ran lots of the other crews. There was a question asked on the application, the test for becoming a ranger. And one was how do you fight the top fire, which was their term for a crown fire? And the guy's answer was run like hell and pray for rain. By August, the air felt combustible. The townspeople grew desperate and Wallace, a folk method of creating loud booms to bring rain was employed. Dynamite was randomly exploded for 60 hours straight, but to no avail. Needless to say, people were on edge. On August 19th, Ranger Ed Pulaski rode back to Wallace to get more supplies for his crews and to warn his family. He had been supervising crews up the West Fork of Placer Creek, an area of great importance because the fires were close to impinging on the town of Wallace. He told his wife Emma and their 10-year-old daughter, Elsie, that he had a bad feeling about the next 24 hours. He warned them Wallace will surely burn and they should be prepared to save themselves. And then as he left, in the morning of the 20th, the circumstances were changing and becoming more ominous. When he left to go back to the fire lines, Emma and Elsie rode with him to the trailhead. He told them goodbye and that he may never see them again. Ten thousand people all together scattered all over the landscape. And again, we come back to the absence of any effective communication. When these guys are out in the woods, they're on their own. They had no idea of fronts approaching. They have no fire behavior forecast, no red flag alert, nothing. And suddenly, firebrands start falling out of the sky. Smoke is blotted out the sun. There's enormous towering convective columns. They start hearing this noise. They're in trouble. On August 20th, 1910, the wind began to blow in the northern Rockies and didn't stop for two days. Hundreds of small fires cycloned in a perfect storm that would consume anything in its path. Firelines that held for days were overrun by 70 mile-per-hour blasts of wind and flame. Over three million acres would burn in just two days. And this was a thousand-year fire. It was off the scale. Nobody had seen anything like this. Nothing were this complex of things in the mountains like that, where people were there in harm's way. The moral presence of leadership, the imposition of personality and conviction that people responded to, I mean, they were panicking with some cause. I mean, this stuff's raining out of the sky on them. What are they going to do? They don't know. They need somebody to tell them what to do. And that's what mattered. We reached the mine just in time, but we were hardly in when the fire swept over our trail. One man tried to make a rush outside, which would have meant certain depth. I drew my revolver and said, the first man who tries to leave this tunnel, shoot. I did not have to use my gun. Ranger Ed Pulaski. Eventually, they all passed out from asphyxiation, and some died either from asphyxiation or drowning in the muck. But the rest lived as they began making their way out. The entrance found the body of Ed Pulaski crumpled up on the ground. They thought he was dead. I did not know how long I was in this condition, but it must have been for hours. I remember hearing a man say, come outside boys, the boss is dead. I replied, like hell he is. He was temporarily blinded. His lungs were a mess. In the meantime, somebody had gotten out, gone to town, and as far as the town understood, the whole crew had been wiped out. So Pulaski's wife, Emma, is under the expectation that her husband is among that number. How we got down, I hardly know. We were in terrible condition. All of us hurt or burned. I was blind and my hands were burned from trying to keep the fire out of the mine. Our shoes were burned off our feet, and our clothing was in parched rags. We were covered in mud and ashes. Later, as we dragged our way down through Placer Creek, we were met by some women from Wallace. They had hot coffee and whiskey. And although we appreciated the kindness of those brave women, we could take nothing but cold water. Ranger Ed Pulaski. The flames of the Coeur d'Alene raced towards the towns of Wallace, Mullen, Taft, Saltees, Avery, and many more. Well, there were a number of communities at risk. And these are wooden towns. They're made of wooden roofs, wooden sidewalks, wooden buildings. They're extremely vulnerable to fire. Around nine o'clock on Saturday night, the flames rushed into Wallace from Placer Creek where Pulaski's crew had been. Spot fire started on the east side of town. Mayor Hanson ordered the alarm to be sounded, and the townspeople became hysterical. Run for your lives, the town is going to burn. The newspaper building became engulfed in flames, and the sunset brewery burned while beer poured out everywhere in the streets. On the middle fork of Big Creek, Ranger John Bell's crew of 50 had been working in conjunction with Ed Pulaski's crew. With the fire chasing them, Bell led his crew to the homestead of John Bochamp. Surrounding the homestead was a two-acre clearing with the creek running through it. Most of the crew laid down in the stream for protection. Seven others, including the homesteader Bochamp, sought shelter in a small storage cave that had been dug to save his belongings. As the fire reached them, trees started falling in every direction. One tree came down over three men lying in the creek, instantly killing two of them. The third man had his legs pinned under the tree and streamed for help. There was nothing anybody could do. He perished in the flames, along with the seven people who sought shelter in the cave. Ranger Debit was in charge of the Avery district. Sensing imminent danger, he sent the deputy sheriff to Setzer Creek to warn a crew of 70 to evacuate back to Avery. But 28 decided to stay back because they felt the ranger and the deputy were exaggerating about the fires. All 28 men were later found burned to death on a hillside. The largest single loss of a crew, we don't know what happened, but you can see them retreating, slowly sort of up the hill. Imagine them sort of doing whatever they could and then finally coming into a small stand and just being overrun by the fire. The evacuation trains were supposed to be for women and children first, but men shoved ladies off the trains in selfish attempts to save their own skin. A fat man shoved my kids and I off the train and took our spot. The soldiers were doing their best to keep some sort of order. And they had to have these soldiers at gunpoint with their fixed bayonets order the men off the trains. There was African-American soldiers who had always sort of done the dirty work of the United States Army. They had put down Indian uprisings. They had put down labor wars in this place five years earlier. They show up and they're supposed to save this town and they're greeted by the kind of racism that's typical of the din. They would have stories about how they're strangely quiet. We would think they would be singing at night so all these sort of racial stereotypes were there, but none of the folks who lived there thought these people could fight a fire. But the soldiers saved at least one town, town of Avery, Idaho, and were instrumental in saving another, the town of Wallace. Thank you, soldier. Many of the residents of Taft decided if the town was going to burn, they would drink all the whiskey before it happened. Later a drunk somehow caught on fire. Screaming and rolling on the ground, a ranger helped to put him out. He took him to a steel boxcar so he would be protected and rest while the train moved on to Saltis. Once in Saltis, the burned victim laid in the boxcar dressed in oil and gauze. His drunk friend from Taft decided to check on him. He lit a match to see, but dropped it. The match caught the gauze and the oil on fire. The victim jumped up and ran out of the boxcar screaming and fanning his own flames. This time he was not as fortunate. He was the only fatality of a Taft resident during the blow-up. Trains took thousands of refugees into Missoula and Spokane. Fires ranged from 30 to 50 miles wide. Once they got on the trains, they would get to these trestles over the valleys and the trestles were burning. So they'd go hide in a cave. They'd back the train into one of these caves that would board through the Bitterroot Mountains. And once in the cave, the fire would find them because it was in search of oxygen. It was a beast. It was a force of its own. Lee Hollingshead was supervisor of a crew of 60 on the west fork of Big Creek. With the fire on their heels, Hollingshead directed his crew to follow the fire line to another burned-over area. 19 of the crew members were panic-stricken and decided instead to run down the hill to the Henry Ditman Cabin which was surrounded by flames. The men stayed inside the cabin and the roof began burning and falling on them. They decided to make a run for it. The last man out fell down on the doorway and was trapped by debris. This saved his life. Hollingshead arrived at the cabin the next day. He was not prepared for the horrific scene he found. All 18 men were burned to death within feet of the cabin along with the five horses and a black bear. The Firefighters by Arthur Chapman Where's Smith and Hennessy, Edwards, Stowe? Where's Casey, Link, and Small? The Ranger Listen and Murmured Low. They're missing, Chief. That's all. Where the smoke rolls high I saw them ride. They wave goodbye to me. Good God! They might as well have tried to put back the rolling sea. I rode for aid till my horse fell dead. Then waited the mountain stream. The pools I swam were red, blood red, and covered with choking steam. There was never a comrade to shout, Hello! Though I flung back many a call. The brave boys knew what it meant to go. They're missing, Chief. That's all. Of the 78 officially listed firefighters who died, the deaths occurred in six separate incidents. So it was not even a case of one mass sort of fatality. There were plenty of accounts from the fire that did not involve fatalities. Ranger Joe Homs' crew survived the fire by taking refuge at a sandbar in the St. Joe River, 65 miles into the Bitter Roots from Wallace. Everybody reported them dead until the crew walked out one week later. When the fire happens, they realize that, like all people who can see public policy moments, they need their launch point. He could see that this would be the fire that would save the agency. So he immediately went on the attack. He and Roosevelt. Roosevelt was touring the west, reviving his popularity. And they used this fire as the rallying cry that saves conservation. They gave speeches. They wrote op-eds. It portrays them as heroic. It was covered all over the U.S. The New York Times had several page one stories. The European Press covered it. So suddenly public sentiment shifted. And you saw a dramatic effect in Congress where they refunded the agency. They doubled its budget. And they created this bill that had been lingering since Roosevelt's day to create National Forest in the east. You would not have National Forest in the Adirondacks in Virginia and Pennsylvania and New England in the West Fire. Pulaski stayed. This is where he lived. He began rebuilding the trails, putting new lookouts up, sending people out to fight new fires, overseeing the clean up, the rehab, the salvage logging, all the rest of it. And as part of that larger task he invented a tool. He thought we needed a combination tool or something to grub with some kind of ads and some kind of cutting tool, put them together in his backyard forge. And then over a number of years refined it. And eventually this was adopted and of course became the Pulaski tool which is now one of the defining implements of wildland firefighting. If we picked one symbol of a wildland firefighter he or she is going to have a Pulaski in their hand. And in many ways it's a perfect expression of how the Pulaski story has become embedded in our culture of wildland firefighter because every time one of us picks up that tool we are reliving that story and all the complexity it brings. William Faulkner once said that for the past isn't dead it's not even past. There are some senses in which the past in the form of the big blow up isn't past. We still carry Pulaski tools that's still a defining tool. Much of our paramilitary approach and organization to firefighting still harks back to 1910 the way we fight fires bringing in people from outside hiring crews and locals mobilizing the military all of these things were first put together in 1910. They are still the way that fundamentally we manage it. The legacy of emergency spending enormously instrumental in shaping, giving us the kind of infrastructure and programs we have. So the debate those fundamental debates those basic questions are still the questions we're asking today can we prevent fires? Do we want to prevent fires? What are the costs of doing it? Do we want to substitute for wildfires? Our own prescribed fires. All those questions were first brought together with great force in 1910 we're still living with them. In our search for answers, please remember our history. The 1910 fires left a plume of scars lessons and heroes that were forged nearly a century ago. But out of the ashes we can still learn from this story and others like it. Much like the Pulaski tool the firefighter spirit is endured through many different policies, administrations tragedies and triumphs. It is now up to us to make sure the bonds and experiences shared by firefighters continue to be remembered and passed on with each swing of the Pulaski from one generation to the next. Thanks folks. Remember, only you can prevent fires.