Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910"1910 was America's millennial year of fire. That summer, American nature and American society collided with tectonic force as western wildfires scorched millions of acres, darkened skies in New England, and deposited soot on the ice of Greenland. Farms, mining camps, and rail towns cracked and burned. A survivor said that the towering flames raged with the sound of a thousand trains rushing over a thousand steel trestles. As one ranger put it, the mountains roared." "Stephen Pyne explains how wildland fires happen and how they are fought, how forests are created then re-created in cycles of burning, and what happens to a landscape when roads, railways, mining camps, logging, and national parks appear. The action distills into a two-day crisis, the Big Blowup of August 20-21, when the fires tripled in size, and focuses in particular on the heroics of Ranger Ed Pulaski, who held his panicked crew at gunpoint in a mine tunnel while the firestorm raged outside." "Pyne brings that year to life through the experiences and words of the rangers, soldiers, politicians, bureaucrats, scientists, and civilians who faced the fires, fought the flames, and were forever scarred by them. It was the first and greatest test of the five-year-old Forest Service. Yet even as seventy-eight fire-fighters perished, a national debate raged about policy, and especially about the relative merits of firefighting versus fire lighting."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved |
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20 August acres Adjutant American Forestry Army August Avery backcountry backfire Ballinger became Big Blowup Bitterroots camp chief forester claims Coeur d'Alene Coeur d'Alene River conflagrations Congress conservation crew dead Debitt District Forester drought Ed Pulaski Elers Koch federal fight fire files fire control fire protection fire season firefighters fireline flames Forest Fires forest reserves Fork Fort George Wright fought fuels Gifford Pinchot Graves Greeley Henry Gannett homestead Ibid Idaho Idaho Panhandle Indian Joe Halm July knew lands light burning lightning logging Lolo miles Missoula Montana Morris Letters Mountains Roared NAPAR National Forest never Northern Rockies Park patrol pine political Pulaski pulaski tool quoted Railway Ranger region River Roscoe Haines scene Seattle Secretary September 1910 Silcox smoke Spencer story Supervisor Taft Thenon timber tion town trail trees trenches troops tunnel U.S. Forest Service Wallace Washington Weigle West wildfire wildland William winds woods York