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A member of my fire department, Peter Rinn, is inspiring. "Even though I am unable to physically fight fires," Peter explains, "I can still reach out to homeowners and help educate them about defensible space." Peter is right. For our society to really embrace the responsibilities of living in fire-prone ecosystems, we need keen awareness about wildfire risk mitigation to permeate our communities. To get there, we need people in communities willing to take on the challenge. Not everyone interested in wildfires can be a firefighter, but there is still a role as educator for those willing to learn more about fire behavior, fire risks, etc. The following list of books and websites is for Peter and others like him who want to learn as much as they can about wildfires. The annotations are generally mine, though some notes come from author websites and promotional blurbs.
As I keep adding resources, this page gets longer...books are first; websites are at the bottom.
BOOKS
The links to Amazon should now be working, and if you use my website to get to Amazon, a small percentage of whatever you spends goes toward supporting my voracious book habit. Thank you!
WHAT I AM CURRENTLY READING (on fire, other books are listed on other pages):
This one has come recommended by my brother's editor. I'll let you know as I get into it.
RECENTLY READ (books related to fire, other books are listed on other pages):
There is fun-loving group of women in fire management in the ABQ area that have a reading group and this was a recent pick. Someone knows someone who knows this author. It's self-published, and as a writer, it was hard for me overlook the errors in grammar, spelling, and so forth, at first...but I really ended up loving this story and admiring this book. The insight view of the Hot Shot crew life-style was compelling and could have been a story on its own, but more gripping was the tragic tale of the suicide of Shawna's firefighting husband.
OTHER BOOKS ABOUT FIRE: When I play the James Keelaghan song "Cold Missouri Waters" on my guitar, it is a tie back to this book and to the Mann Gulch Fire that inspired this book. As the song lyrics go "August '49, west Montana, was the hottest day on record, and the forest tinder dry...Lightning strikes, in the mountains, I was crew chief at the jump base, I prepared the boys to fly..." Song and book tell the story of Wag Dodge and the other 15 firefighters, thirteen who died in this tragedy, that forever changed wildland firefighting tactics and philosophies. Maclean does an incredible job telling this story.
BTW, I know of 5 recordings of Cold Missouri Waters: James Keelaghan first released the song on his CD "A Recent Future." He re-issued the song on the CD "Then Again" correcting a few details including changing 'north Montana' to 'west Montana.' The song reached a large audience when it was included on the CD "Cry, Cry, Cry" a collaborative effort by folksingers Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, and Richard Shindell. Firefighters know of the song though through live performances, a CD, and an amazing DVD project by the Denver-based group, The Fiddlin' Foresters. The DVD is used in fire training and incorporates a presentation with pictures of the firefighters who died in Mann Gulch, the area where the fire occured, and other significant parts of the story. It's one of those short films that leaves goosebumps down your spine. (Hey, my claim to fame, is that I introduced the Fiddlin' Foresters to the song back at a Fire Information National Conference held in Scottsdale.)
Norman Maclean died before Young Men and Fire was published, and his son John Maclean completed the editing of the book. Since then John Maclean has been a prolific storyteller in wildfire world. Here are some his books:
This is billed as the "True Story" of the South Canyon Fire; though with all disasters and events there are as many stories and as many truths as there are people involved. There are some uncanny parallels between this '94 tragedy and '49 tragedy John's father wrote about.
This book revists some of the other fires (Rattlesnake, CA 1953 and Sadler, NV 1999) that have been fueled tabletop training discussions of many wildfire trainings. There is also an interesting follow-up to Young Men and Fire as John Maclean and Mann Gulch Survivor Robert Sallee revisit the fire site. I refer to this in my essay "Chediski Origin Myth" in my book The Forester's Log.
Maclean's third book follows the investigative style of his and his father's books, this time of the 2001 Thirty-Mile Fire. More sad lessons; and more history of how wildland firefighting policy is ever evolving. Now, we rather tongue-in-cheek proclaim, that if you are lucky with your career, you will never be on a fire that causes you to come face to face with John Maclean!
If you think John Maclean is a prolific writer, try catching up on the fire literature that Stephen Pyne has brought into this world:
I read this one first, Pyne wrote this first, so I list it first...but don't expect be to keep the rest in chronological order. This is a good historical account of firefighting decades ago...and I've climbed some of those ladders on lookout trees and hung around the North Rim fire shack...so I love this book! 1990?
I read this one when I was working on my master's thesis on fire in the bosque. I might have been jaded then, a little too passionate that fire was at the center of the universe, but this book confirmed that outlook. 1995.
A Weyerhauser Environmental Book. 2001.
Another Weyerhauser Environmental Book. 1997.
A Fire History of Canada, 2008.
A Fire History of Australia, 1998.
2004.
This book is a nice eye-opener for anyone--including me--prone to criticize early Forest Service policy about putting wildfires out. 2008.
Subtitle: An Environmental History, Told Through Fire, of Europe and Europe's Encounter With the World. A Weyerhauser Environmental Book. 2000.
The list goes on...I'll work on it later...
WEBSITES
This might be my favorite wild fire web-site...not just because they often post The Forester's Log...but because I can find leadership information, safety information, stories, case studies, and almost any other pertinent research on fires and firefighting.
This is the geographical coordination center's website for the Southwest, which is my home area. I have watched this website develop over the past decade and it's always been phenomenal, thank you Jay Ellington! This site is truly the first place I go for fire information, intelligence on fires, or links to any other fire or weather information I need. There are a few months every year, where this website is my home page.
This is the ultimate website to visit if you live in a beautiful setting...i.e. you have vegetation--grass, brush, trees--around your home. If your neighborhood isn't in a Firewise community, visiting this site will start your journey! |