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REGARDLESS OF how fire management policies are modified, the grunts don't see their jobs changing much. "We do what they tell us," says Ali Ulwelling, an Alpine Hotshot out of Estes Park, Colorado. "We're all assholes and elbows."
Still, firefighters are keen observers of how sweeping policy decisions can go wrong in the field. "We've got kind of a dysfunctional culture in my mind," says Marc Mullenix, division chief of wildland fires for the Boulder City Fire Department, speaking of the five federal agencies that have to unite logistically when a large forest fire erupts. "We
have this huge dysfunctional family, and you put them on this fire and you wonder why things don't get done right." Wayne Patton, incident commander for the Burned Area Rehabilitation Team at Los Alamos, echoed that sentiment when asked if he thought the feds would come up with substantive improvements to the prescribed burn policy. "God, I hope so," he
said, "'cause this thing was a mess."—STEPHEN TITUS
ASHES TO ASHES
A short history of fire in America
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| 1850s |
Native Americans and early white pioneers set brush fires to drive game and improve foraging. |
| 1871 |
Peshtigo, Wisconsin, is wiped out by a fire that kills 1,500; additional blazes claim 760 more lives in Minnesota and Michigan. The story is overshadowed in the papers by the Great Chicago Fire, which kills 300. |
| 1872 |
The 1st United States Cavalry fights fires in Yellowstone National Park with buckets. |
| 1910 |
First fire lookouts built in U.S. forests atop 10- to 30-foot trees. |
| 1910 |
A spate of fires in Idaho and Montana collectively known as "The Big Blowup" kill 85 people, 74 of them firefighters. National media coverage treats fire as solely a destructive force, rather than a natural process. Public gets scared. |
| 1920 |
First Pulaski Tool manufactured. Designed by a veteran of the 1910 fires, Ed Pulaski, the combo ax and mattock remains a smoke-jumper essential today. |
| 1928 |
Controlled burns are first used for fire management, to maintain fire breaks in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. |
| 1939 |
Fire teams experiment with airdropping water, supplies, dummies, and finally live jumpers. Basic jump gear includes two canopies, a felt-padded jumpsuit, a football helmet, ankle braces, logger boots, and a jockstrap. |
| 1945 |
Forest Service creates Smokey Bear icon. Later, an orphaned cub named Smokey generates so much fan mail that he is assigned his own ZIP code. |
| 1946 |
Surplus B-17s,B-29s, P-47s, and Navy dive- bombers are modified to blitz wildfires. |
| 1956 |
Sodium calcium borate, the first air-dropped retardant, rains down on the Inaja Fire in Southern California. |
| 1978 |
Realizing that fire can, at times, be beneficial, the Forest Service shifts its focus from fire eradication to fire management. |
| 1988 |
The military pitches in to fight fires in Yellowstone. Huge blazes drive home the futility of suppressing all fires. |
| 1993 |
National Interagency Fire Center established in Boise, Idaho. |
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