| A Season of Fire: Four Months on the Firelines of America's Forests. By Douglas Gatenbein. 2003. Penguin Group (USA) Inc., New York. 292p. US $24.95 hardbound. Canada $37.50. ISBN# 1-58542-176-6. |
| This book brings to light all of the interworkings involved with fire suppression in the American West in a way that both the experienced firefighter and landowner will appreciate and enjoy. The author sacrificed the summer of 2001 to shadow and interviews many firefighters, both on and off the fireline, to provide an un-biased, personal, and "from-the-heart" perspective of this dangerous and dramatic work. Along with his "from-the-heart" perspective, Douglas points out "…the strengths and weaknesses of how wildland fire is fought in the western United States", including the ecological and recreational aspects of fire suppression, or lack thereof. In the first 2 chapters Douglas outlines the way the fire season builds, including the type of seasonal employees that often occupy these positions, and the pre-season routines that can be found all across the West. Douglas describes the techniques used to forecast expected fire season intensities, and walks the reader through the types of vegetation that makes ecosystems likely to burn. In Chapter 3, entitled Red Card, Douglas explains the week-long process in which firefighters are trained in the process of wildland firefighting. Douglas himself, being completely new to firefighting, attended this class in Entiat, Washington. Douglas also touches on the hierarchy of both firefighting personnel and the militaristic chain of command that is ultimately involved in the fighting of fires. In this chapter, the word safety is standard issue, including the practices the interagency crews have adopted to ensure that safety is the highest priority. The subject of Chapters 4 and 5 is the Thirtymile fire, which, in 2001, was the first large fire of the season for Region 6 (Washington and Oregon). In this fire 4 young firefighters from the Naches initial attack crew were burnt over and killed, while others were injured. In fact, Douglas had recently attended fire school with some of the victims. In these chapters, Douglas points out the factors of both personnel and fire behavior that led to these deaths. In Chapter 7 Douglas explains the relationship between small towns of the American West and wildland firefighting. This chapter outlines the effects that fires have on small towns, especially tourist towns. The Green Knoll fire which burned near a subdivision of high-dollar homes outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming is the main focus. This chapter is an excellent example how Douglas looks inside all aspects of wildland firefighting, including the indirect economic effects. In Chapter 9, Douglas discusses the firefighters who are atop the hierarchy of firefighters, the hotshots. Of course, smokejumpers or big-wig command teams may take credit for being the top dogs, but as Douglas found during his shadowing of the Logan hotshots, it is the hotshot crews that carry the weight of the fire suppression and are in fact recognized around fire camp as the "top dogs." Hotshots are members of elite 20 person firefighting crew that do the bulk of the dirty, dangerous, and hard work in fire suppression. Hotshots spend their summer bouncing back and forth to fires of the highest severity, rarely receiving more than one or 2 days off after every 2 weeks of duty. In Chapter 10 Douglas continues to examine the relationship between small towns and the business of firefighting. This time the economics of small towns are taken into account. Douglas explains the governmental push to privatize firefighting efforts, and the fact that environmental resource-dependent occupations such as logging are the source of many private firefighters. Many towns throughout the West were once based on logging. Today logging is not the driving force of the western economy, causing many people to turn to firefighting. "The ghost of old logging communities live on in todays firefighting economy." Douglas also highlights several large-scale businesses that have prospered along with wildland firefighting, such as a boots store in Spokane, Washington, and the many small business owners that print and sell t-shirts in the prosperity of fire camps. As an example of privatization, Douglas interviews several pilots from Hawkins & Powers aviation, who contract out surplus war planes to drop fire retardant. In Chapter 11, entitled The Fidley Fire, Douglas explains the process in which fires are assigned levels of severity, resources are assigned to fires, and how resources are organized to fight fires. The Fidley Fire itself takes place during the month of August when 12,000 firefighters were dispatched to fight fires across the West. During that month Douglas visited the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, where each is crew is tracked and resources are assigned to individual tasks based on fire severity. Also, in this chapter Douglas touches on the growing disasters which forest fires create, and how the kind of damage a fire can do has changed in the past half-century. In the last 3 chapters Douglas wraps up the spectrum of fighting fires across the West today by comparing, fires, ecosystems, and economics. These chapters brings out Douglas's un-biased and from-the-heart perspectives in such a way that he truly highlights the current problematic situation in fire suppression today. Douglas does this by examining all options and perspectives of fire in ecosystems, the damage done with fire suppression, and all forestry practices that can be used to reduce the damage of fire suppression. In the last of these 3 chapters, entitled Mopping Up, Douglas ends the book with the coming of autumn snow. A Season of Fire is a good book. Everyone that has had or may someday have something to do with fire suppression on a national level should enjoy and anticipate.—Tom Schoenfelder, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington. |