The lost fire
crew
You can't outrun wind and
fire that are traveling 70 miles an hour. You can't hide when you
are entirely surrounded by red-hot color. You can't see when it's
pitch black in the afternoon. Supervisors' and rangers' official
reports, old-timers' remembrances, and newspaper stories verify
that on District One there were men who went stark raving crazy,
men who flung themselves into the onrushing flames, men who shot
themselves. It was the Big Blowup!
A fire crew of 27 men battling the great 1910 fires died
when fire swept over them near the head of Storm Creek. There were
no survivors and all were burned beyond recognition. Buried where
they fell, they were later taken to St. Maries, ID and buried in a
special plot for firefighters who died in the 1910 fires. Among the
headstones are eight marked simply "Unknown." Firefighters had been
gathered so quickly that crew bosses did not know all their
names.
What happened? We will never know for certain. Stories
circulated after the fires started that the men were warned but
refused to leave, believing no real danger existed or that they
would be safer staying put. It was the largest forest fire in
American history. Maybe even the largest forest fire ever. No one
knows for sure, but even now, it is hard to put into words what it
did.
For two terrifying days and night's - August 20 and 21, 1910 - the
fire raged across three million acres of virgin timberland in
northern Idaho and western Montana. Many thought the world would
end, and for 86, it did. Most of what was destroyed fell to
hurricane-force winds that turned the fire into a blowtorch.
Re-constructing what happened leads to an almost impossible
conclusion: Most of the cremation occurred in a six-hour
period.
A forester named Edward Stahl wrote of flames shooting
hundreds of feet in the air, "fanned by a tornadic wind so violent
that the flames flattened out ahead, swooping to earth in great
darting curves, truly a veritable red demon from hell."Among the 86
who perished were 28 or 29 men - no one knows for sure - who tried
to outrun their fate in a straight upstraight down canyon called
Storm Creek. Two men too terrified to face death took their own
lives. One jumped from a burning train and the other shot himself
when he feared an approaching fire would overtake him. Two fire
fighters fled into flames before the very eyes of horrified
comrades huddled in a nearby stream.
A non-tracking geocoin awaits for
the FTF