Young Men and Fire for Old Men

You may know author Norman MacLean from the short story “A River Runs Through It” which was made into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Tom Skerritt.  MacLean also wrote a fascinating study of a forest fire in Montana in 1949 that killed twelve “Smokejumpers”, the elite fire fighting parachutists.  The fire at Mann Gulch in central Montana takes up the first half of “Young Men and Fire”, published two years after Maclean’s death in 1990.  The second half is the story within the story of MacLean’s efforts to find what really happened so he could write the first half of the book, all the while knowing he had to hurry because time was gaining on him.

It may be a stretch to fold an account of a forest fire in the middle of BFE into a blog about management, but as I read the book I realized similar situations happen at work, although our fires are obviously figurative.  I’ve wondered to myself if I would have had the foresight and the courage to unearth the problems within the smokejumpers that contributed to the tragedy.  Had I been one of the bosses I doubt I would have been able to see things as they really were, and had I been one of the bosses, knowing what they knew, the same thing would have happened. 

The lessons from 1949 are worth knowing.  They might apply to what you are trying to do.

The Forest Service began using parachutists as forest fire shock troops as early as 1940.  According to Wikipedia, the name “smokejumpers” originated with the 555^th Parachute Infantry Battalion, and all-African-American unit sent to fight forest fires in the Pacific Northwest in 1945, and was later used to describe anyone crazy enough to descend via ‘chute into a fire zone.  By 1949 the organization had been bolstered by returning WWII veterans, but it was still learning.  As the book illustrates, it would add to that learning with nearly the worst possible consequences.

It was the hottest day of the year, that day.  The fire had been started by lightning, and the turbulent air no doubt made the smokejumpers itchy to get out of the C-47 transport.  (One of the men got so sick he didn’t jump, and quit the outfit as soon as he got back to earth.)   The leader of the group, a guy named Wag Dodge (only in the West…) and Earl Cooley, the spotter, found a safe zone where the men could land and could reasonably get their gear dropped to them, and out the door they went.  It wasn’t a big fire as Western fires go, and the men felt that it would take the remainder of the afternoon and the night to contain it.  It had started on a ridge between Mann Gulch and Meriwether Canyon (named, like so much Pacific NW geography, for this guy) and it was working its way down to the bottom of the gulch. 

So there’s problem #1.  We have a group of the best of the best, young men who lived through Bastogne (at least one of them), and who did not see the potential, did not see the makings of something that could be their undoing.  They were young, strong, fit.  They had seen fire before and they knew the woods. 

After landing Dodge went to find the local ranger (ironically a former smokejumper retired due to the risks) who had been hounding the fire most of the afternoon.  He left his second in charge and instructed them to grab the gear and work their way down the opposite (north) ridge to get a better view of the fire and to determine where to start the fire line.  After finding the ranger and re-joining a group that was too scattered for his liking, Dodge saw that the fire had flowed to the bottom of the south side of the gulch faster than he had anticipated, and was beginning to come up the north (his) side.  [BTW – the bottom of the gulch, at the Missouri River, is to the west.]  He felt the wind blowing from the fire to his position, and he realized they had walked into a trap.  The door wasn’t closed, but it was sure as hell starting to swing.

Problem #2.  These boys aint city slickers.  They’ve been in the woods and woken up with dew, even snow, on their bedrolls.  They expected the wind to blow down the gulch when in fact, due to the particular geography of the place, it blew up.  That and fire prefers to go uphill anyway, and it was fast.

Dodge and the jumpers, with the ranger, angled back into the gulch, only now they ranged up hill to try to make the crest of the north ridge before the fire.  He deciphered through the smoke that they were losing the race and ordered the men to drop their equipment and make for the top of the ridge.  Soon he estimated that the fire was only a minute behind them, gaining on them, radiating onto their backs, and he did something that was, at the time, virtually unheard of.  He lit a back fire.  The men were all behind him and they were astonished.  He tried to communicate to them that they should stay with him, but over the roar of the fire, and in the near panic that trumps reason, the men all continued up the slope.  Two made it.  Two survived the night but died the next day in the hospital.  Eleven other men, including the ex-smokejumper ranger, died on the north side of Mann Gulch.  Concrete crosses now mark where they fell.

But not Dodge.  He survived in the ashes of his escape fire, which we know now was a strategy to starve the main fire by prematurely burning all the fuel. 

Problem #3.  The boys had never seen an emergency survival fire.  They might have heard rumor of such a thing, but never been trained how to use one.  Dodge hadn’t, either, but said later that it occurred to him as a common sense solution to the mess he found himself in.  It did not seem as common sense to his crew.  Which leads us to…

Problem #4.  Had the crew known him better, had they trusted him, they might have put their lives in his hands.  But the Forest Service did not keep a group together, building a team.  They kept a seniority list – when they needed 10 guys, they took the first ten guys from the list, matched them with a foremen, and put them on the plane.  When they were done with that fire, they were added to the bottom of the list.  When there were no fires, they sent guys off to maintain trails, which is like having Dale Jr. drive your carpool.

There are problems and then solutions, easier for me sixty years on. 

• Confidence and pride are generally good things.  Too much of a good thing is a bad thing.  ‘Nuff said.
• You might think you know what you are getting into since you’ve been there and done that.  You never realize that a similar pattern is not until it is too late. 
• Use your imagination.  It’s amazing to me how many carpal-tunnel surgeons are good at diagnosing carpal tunnel. 
• Be prepared for the wheels to fall off the bus or for your team to be thrown under it. 
• Build a team and make time for the team to just hang out – they gotta know each other to trust each other and the leader has to make that happen.

PS.  The link above to the Missouri River and the map of Mann Gulch is to the Fire Service Report from !993.  If you found any of the above interesting you will definitely want to give it a read.