On the morning of July 3, 1994, a forest fire on Storm King Mountain in Colorado was mistakenly recorded by the district's Bureau of Land Management office as burning in South Canyon, thereby mislabeling forever one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of firefighting. That seemingly small human error foreshadowed the numerous other minor errors that, three days later, would be compounded into the tragedy that took the lives of fourteen firefighters. In this dramatic reconstruction of the disaster and its aftermath, John Maclean tells the heroic and cautionary story of people who were experts in their field but became the victims of nature at its most unforgiving.
On July 1 the first warnings came from Christopher Cuoco, a National Weather Service meteorologist, who predicted "a high potential for large fire growth" and who would later break down in tears when he discovered, after the fire, that his warning had never been relayed to the firefighters on the mountain. His worst fears were confirmed when more than 5600 lightning strikes battered the area on July 2 and ignited a rash of wildfires -- including the one on Storm King Mountain.
A succession of smokejumpers, engine crews, volunteer firement, fire managers, and aerial observers made trips to the fire on the mountain, but by July 5 not a single person had walked to the fire, let alone tried to fight it. On that day a group from the local BLM district set out to explore the fire, but their leader Butch Blanco did not venture down the fatal fireline itself -- an omission that would haunt him later.
The first people to actually reach the fire were a close-knit group of professional smokejumpers from Missoula, led by Don Mackey, who was regarded by all who knew him as the embodiment of the smokejumping spirit and tradition. Also in the group were Sarah Doehring -- one of the few women jumpers and considered "tougher than a ten-penny spike" -- and Kevin Erickson, who had recently become Mackey's brother-in-law. Joining the smokejumpers on July 6 would be the 20-person crew of hotshots from Prineville, Oregon; most were working that summer to earn tuition money for college or graduate school.
In telling what happened to these people and revealing the horrors of being trapped by a blowup, the most dangerous fate that can befall a firefighter, FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN sets out to answer several puzzling questions: Why wasn't the fire, which burned in sight of an interstate highway, put out sooner? Why did Don Mackey, who had found his way to safety, turn back to the fire? How did such a disaster, a near twin of the notorious 1949 Mann Gulch , catch so many wildfire professionals off guard? And why did nearly two days elapse before the bodies of two of the victims were found?
It took John Maclean more than four years and 50,000 miles of travel to find the answers to these questions. As a result, the book brings to light many facts about the fire through more than a dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and countless interviews with survivors and members of the investigation team -- one of whom refused to sign the final report after a bitter debate about where the blame for what happened should be placed.
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN is more than mere investigative journalism. While offering action and adventure storytelling at its best, it also provides deeply moving insights into the lives and dreams of a special breed of people who put their lives on the line as part of their daily jobs.
