Great Fire of 1910


The Great Fire of 1910 was a wildfire in the western United States that burned in North Idaho and Western Montana, with extensions into Eastern Washington and Southeast British Columbia, in the summer of 1910. The area burned included large parts of the Bitterroot, Cabinet, Clearwater, Coeur d'Alene, Flathead, Kaniksu, Kootenai, Lewis and Clark, Lolo, and St. Joe national forests.
The fire burned over two days on the weekend of August 20–21, after strong winds caused numerous smaller fires to combine into a firestorm of unprecedented size. It killed 87 people, mostly firefighters, destroyed numerous manmade structures, including several entire towns, and burned more than three million acres of forest with an estimated billion dollars' worth of timber lost. It is believed to be the largest, although not the deadliest, forest fire in U.S. history. The extensive burned area was approximately the size of the state of Connecticut.
In the aftermath of the fire, the U.S. Forest Service received considerable recognition for its firefighting efforts, including a doubling of its budget from Congress. The outcome was to highlight firefighters as public heroes while raising public awareness of national nature conservation. The fire is often considered a significant impetus in the development of early wildfire prevention and suppression strategies.

Origin

A great number of problems contributed to the destruction caused by the Great Fire of 1910. The wildfire season started early that year because the winter of 1909–1910 and the spring and summer of 1910 were extremely dry, and the summer sufficiently hot to have been described as "like no others." The drought resulted in forests that were teeming with dry fuel, which had previously grown up on abundant autumn and winter moisture. Hundreds of fires were ignited by hot cinders flung from locomotives, sparks, lightning, and backfiring crews. By mid-August, there were 1,000 to 3,000 fires burning in Idaho, Montana, and Washington.

The Big Blowup

August 20 brought hurricane-force winds to the interior northwest, whipping the hundreds of small fires into one or two much larger blazing infernos. Such a conflagration was impossible to fight; there were too few men and supplies. The United States Forest Service was only five years old at the time and unprepared for the possibilities of the dry summer or a fire of this magnitude, though all summer it had been urgently recruiting as many men as possible to fight the hundreds of fires already burning, many with little forestry or firefighting experience. Earlier in August President William Howard Taft had authorized the addition of military troops to the effort, and 4,000 troops, including seven companies from the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Regiment, were brought in to help fight the fires burning in the northern Rockies. The arrival of the Buffalo Soldiers troops almost doubled the black population of Idaho.
Smoke from the fire was said to have been seen as far east as Watertown, New York, and as far south as Denver, Colorado. It was reported that at night, out into the Pacific Ocean, ships could not navigate by the stars because the sky was cloudy with smoke.
The extreme scorching heat of the sudden blowup can be attributed to the expansive Western white pine forests that covered much of northern Idaho at the time. Hydrocarbons in the trees' resinous sap boiled out and created a cloud of highly flammable gas that blanketed hundreds of square miles, which then spontaneously detonated dozens of times, each time sending tongues of flame thousands of feet into the sky and creating a rolling wave of fire that destroyed anything and everything in its path.

Firefighters

At least 78 firefighters were killed while trying to control the fire, not including those firefighters who died after the fire of smoke damage to their lungs. The entire 28-man "Lost Crew" was overcome by flames and perished on Setzer Creek outside of Avery, Idaho.
Perhaps the most famous story of survival is that of Ranger Ed Pulaski, a U.S. Forest Service ranger who led a large crew of about 44 men to safety in an abandoned prospect mine outside of Wallace, Idaho, just as they were about to be overtaken by the fire. It is said that Pulaski fought off the flames at the mouth of the shaft until he passed out like the others. Around midnight, a man announced that he, at least, was getting out of there. Knowing that they would have no chance of survival if they ran, Pulaski drew his pistol, threatening to shoot the first person who tried to leave. In the end, all but five of the forty or so men survived. Pulaski has since been widely celebrated as a hero for his efforts; the mine tunnel in which he and his crew sheltered from the fire, now known as the Pulaski Tunnel, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Aftermath

The fire was finally extinguished when another cold front swept in, bringing steady rain and some early snowfall. Several towns were completely destroyed by the
In Idaho, one third of the town of Wallace was burned to the ground, with an estimated $1 million in damage. Passenger trains evacuated thousands of Wallace residents to Spokane and Missoula. Another train with 1,000 people from Avery took refuge in a tunnel after racing across a burning trestle. Other towns with severe damage included Burke, Kellogg, Murray, and Osburn, all in Idaho. The towns of Avery, Saltese, as well as a major part of Wallace, were saved by backfires. The smoke from the fire went as far to the east as New York City, and as far south as Dallas.

Legacy

The Great Fire of 1910 cemented and shaped the U.S. Forest Service, which at the time was a newly established department on the verge of cancellation, facing opposition from mining and forestry interests. Before the epic conflagration, there were many debates about the best way to handle forest fires—whether to let them burn because they were a part of nature and were expensive to fight, or to fight them in order to protect the forests.
One of the people who fought the fire, Ferdinand Silcox, went on to become the fifth chief of the fire service. Influenced by the devastation of the Big Blowup, Silcox promoted the "10 a.m." policy, with the goal of suppressing all fires by 10 a.m. of the day following their report. It was decided that the Forest Service was to prevent and battle every wildfire. More recently, this absolutist attitude to wildfires has been criticized for altering the natural disturbance mechanisms that drive forest ecosystem structure, which paradoxically increases the destructive potential of forest fires.