Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [160]
Crews on many of the fires continue to demobilize. Unified Area Command operations in West Yellowstone have been shut down. As a result, accurate information on crew sizes and resources for some of the fires was not readily available.
AFTERWORD
Donald Hodel, the real Interior Secretary of the United States under President Ronald Reagn, sent the following letter to newspapers across the country on October 13, 1988. It was also printed in 1989 in The Fires of ’88, Yellowstone Park and Montana in Flames by Ross Simpson.
To the Editor:
This summer long will be remembered for the forest fires that raged over much of the public lands in the West. Before the season is behind us, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks for the heroic efforts of the over thirty thousand firefighters from across the country who, over the course of the past several months, risked their lives to try and control a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions. Whether called by a personal sense of duty or summoned by obligation, these men and women — working against insurmountable odds — showed exceptional courage and patriotism.
Many firefighters worked twelve to fourteen hour shifts, with days consisting of hot, exhausting work battling fires, and nights spent in sleeping bags. In addition to facing the danger of intense blazes, falling limbs and oppressive smoke, they coped with everything from rockslides to angry yellow jackets. At the end of a workday, many firefighters carrying heavy gear hiked as much as ten miles before being picked up and returned to their camp.
Modern day forest managers and park rangers never have faced the conditions experienced this year in which millions of acres of aged timberlands were parched by four or five years of severe drought. Substantial portions of these great forests were living on borrowed time. Therefore, despite all efforts, it was impossible to control the course of natural events.
We would be remiss if we did not learn from this experience. Now we begin the painstaking study to determine what, if anything, can be done to insure that we will not face devastating fires of this kind in the future. Work must also be done to help the rehabilitation of Yellowstone National Park and other affected areas.
Fortunately, much of Yellowstone escaped the raging fires—and, surprisingly, many acres of lush forestlands within burned areas were left unscathed. We are anticipating a great influx of tourists interested in seeing the extent of the damage and the progress of regrowth. Recreational opportunities will continue to abound.
Yellowstone will not be the same within our generation, but nature recovers from these events by rebirth of the old growth forests and rejuvenation of forage and wildlife. It would be foolish to say that the Yellowstone National Park forest fires were welcomed - but over the course of the next decade, we may witness some beneficial events.
This fact does not offer much solace for the local economies that have been disrupted, people displaced and painful losses suffered. And those of us who love Yellowstone cannot help but view the events as a natural tragedy. But the losses would have been much greater had it not been for the dedication and perseverance of the brave firefighters - and all who supported them in this difficult time. Again, to them, our thanks for doing an outstanding job.
AUTHORS NOTE
As the twentieth anniversary of the 1988 fire season approaches, it remains one of the milestone events in the history of man’s summer battles against nature. The firefighting effort was, at the time, the most expensive event in fire suppression, over $120,000,000. Estimates suggest that from 25,000 to 32,000 firefighters fought on the lines, with up to 9000 active at one time: career professional fire experts, smokejumpers, pilots, seasonal groundpounders, college students, convicts, and the armed forces. In 1988 in the United States, 68,396 wildfires burned 3,799,550