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Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire – An Award-Winning Investigation of the Deadly 1994 Disaster
In 1994, a wildfire on Colorado's Storm King Mountain was wrongly identified at the outset as occurring in South Canyon.
This unintentional, seemingly minor human error was the first in a string of mistakes that would be compounded into one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of firefighting. Before it was done, fourteen courageous firefighters—men and women, hotshots, smoke jumpers, and helicopter crew—would lose their lives battling the deadly so-called South Canyon blaze.
John N. Maclean's award-winning national bestseller Fire on the Mountain is a stunning reconstruction of the killer conflagration and its aftermath—a page-turning true adventure of nature at its most unforgiving, and a powerful, indelible portrait of a unique breed of heroes who regularly and without question place their lives on the line.
This unintentional, seemingly minor human error was the first in a string of mistakes that would be compounded into one of the greatest tragedies in the annals of firefighting. Before it was done, fourteen courageous firefighters—men and women, hotshots, smoke jumpers, and helicopter crew—would lose their lives battling the deadly so-called South Canyon blaze.
John N. Maclean's award-winning national bestseller Fire on the Mountain is a stunning reconstruction of the killer conflagration and its aftermath—a page-turning true adventure of nature at its most unforgiving, and a powerful, indelible portrait of a unique breed of heroes who regularly and without question place their lives on the line.
275 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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1822 people want to read
About the author
John N. Maclean
10 books96 followersJohn Norman Maclean is a prize-winning author and journalist, has published four books on fatal wildland fires.
Maclean was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1943, the second of two children.Maclean is the son of Norman Maclean, author of the novella A River Runs Through It.
He attended the Chicago school system through high school and graduated from Shimer College, then in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, a former satellite school of the University of Chicago. An honor student at Shimer, he received the school’s distinguished alumni award in 1975.He married Frances Ellen McGeachie in 1968; they have two adult sons, Daniel, a science teacher in Anchorage, Alaska, and John Fitzroy, a public defender for the state of Maryland.
John Maclean was a writer, editor, and reporter for the Chicago Tribune for 30 years before he resigned in 1995 to begin a second career writing books. Maclean started his journalistic career in 1964 as a police reporter and rewrite man with the legendary City News Bureau of Chicago. He went to work for the Chicago Tribune the following year.
In 1970, Maclean was assigned to the Washington Bureau of the Tribune. As diplomatic correspondent there he covered the State Department and was a regular on the "Kissinger Shuttle," covering much of the "shuttle diplomacy" of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Maclean was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University for the 1974-1975 academic year. He became the Tribune’s Foreign Editor in Chicago in 1988. He resigned from the newspaper in 1995 to write Fire on the Mountain.
Maclean, a frequent speaker at wildland fire academies, workshops, and conventions, is a member of the Seeley Lake Volunteer Fire Department and the Explorer's Club. He is a qualified as a federal public information officer.
Maclean was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1943, the second of two children.Maclean is the son of Norman Maclean, author of the novella A River Runs Through It.
He attended the Chicago school system through high school and graduated from Shimer College, then in Mt. Carroll, Illinois, a former satellite school of the University of Chicago. An honor student at Shimer, he received the school’s distinguished alumni award in 1975.He married Frances Ellen McGeachie in 1968; they have two adult sons, Daniel, a science teacher in Anchorage, Alaska, and John Fitzroy, a public defender for the state of Maryland.
John Maclean was a writer, editor, and reporter for the Chicago Tribune for 30 years before he resigned in 1995 to begin a second career writing books. Maclean started his journalistic career in 1964 as a police reporter and rewrite man with the legendary City News Bureau of Chicago. He went to work for the Chicago Tribune the following year.
In 1970, Maclean was assigned to the Washington Bureau of the Tribune. As diplomatic correspondent there he covered the State Department and was a regular on the "Kissinger Shuttle," covering much of the "shuttle diplomacy" of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Maclean was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University for the 1974-1975 academic year. He became the Tribune’s Foreign Editor in Chicago in 1988. He resigned from the newspaper in 1995 to write Fire on the Mountain.
Maclean, a frequent speaker at wildland fire academies, workshops, and conventions, is a member of the Seeley Lake Volunteer Fire Department and the Explorer's Club. He is a qualified as a federal public information officer.
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April 27, 2016
Sky had turned red…smoke was boiling/Two hundred yards to safety, death was fifty yards behind/I don’t know why…I just thought it/I struck a match to waist high grass running out of time…
-- from Cold Missouri Waters*
In James Keelaghan’s mournful ballad about the 1949 Mann Gulch fire, he takes the point of view of Wag Dodge, the surviving foreman of an elite group of smokejumpers, thirteen of whom died on the mountain. In the song, Dodge is dying of cancer just a few years after the blowup. He is asked to explain – to rationalize – his now-famous command decision: with a firestorm at his back, and no chance to outrun it, Dodge lit a backfire in front of himself, and then lay down in the still-warm ashes. The fire chasing him suffocated in the backfire, and Dodge rose from the ashes, part phoenix and part Job’s servant.
Some hailed Dodge’s quick thinking. Others argued that his seemingly counterintuitive decision – to literally fight fire with fire – confused his men, and forced them into a fatal detour. Right or wrong, Wag Dodge lived and died with his decision. And right or wrong, you cannot deny him this: Wag Dodge was a man who kept his head. With his world shrinking rapidly to a place of heat and flame and poisonous gas, he had the presence of mind to use fire physics against fire itself.
The deaths of wilderness firefighters are thankfully not a common occurrence. But when they do happen, it tends to take lives in bunches. Hotshot crews or smokejumper crews. They die in the teams in which they lived and worked. These crews are not the types of people we see as victims. They are young and strong and brave. They are the kind of people we think will live forever. But when death comes for them - immortality being an illusion - it usually happens not because of the wiliness of fire – fire, after all, is not a supervillain, but is constrained by its triangle of heat, oxygen and fuel – but because of human decisions.
The ghosts of Mann Gulch and the fallibility of human decision-making loom over every page of John Maclean’s Fire on the Mountain, the story of the misnamed and deadly South Canyon Fire, which killed fourteen firefighters in 1994.
This is appropriate for a couple reasons. First, the South Canyon Fire (which actually occurred on Storm King Mountain) shared a similar topography and course as the Mann Gulch Fire. In both cases, winds from a nearby river (the Colorado at South Canyon, the Missouri at Mann Gulch) turned dry gulches into chimneys, propelling fast moving flames uphill. Secondly, Mann Gulch’s most famous chronicler was Maclean’s father, Norman. Norman Maclean, a late-blooming author, spent the last years of his life obsessing over the young men who died in Mann Gulch. As age took its toll, and as his wife suffered her last illness, Norman Maclean’s “fire report” turned into something far different. An elegiacal rumination on youth and old age and what he called the “lonely road to death.”
John Maclean’s account of the South Canyon Fire bears no resemblance to his father’s. That is to his credit. Undoubtedly, he must have been tempted to try on his father’s lyrical, looping prose,** but instead, turns in a sturdy, journalistic account that mostly refrains from the purple grandeur of Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire.
The story begins with a bitter note – a fire that could have been knocked down by a couple of men. Because of jurisdictional squabbles between the Bureau of Land Management, the Forestry Service, and local fire departments, the fire was able to grow and spread.
The first third of Fire on the Mountain is devoted to these squabbles. It is a lot of talk about politics and competing agencies and budgets. This material doesn’t necessarily have to be dry, but it is (I actually gave up on this book once, only coming back to it after the Yarnell Fire disaster). Maclean’s telling lacks focus and structure. He introduces too many people and too many agencies without taking the time to fully explain everyone’s role in the bureaucracy (since Maclean spends little time on personalities, a simple dramatis personae would have been quite helpful; at the least, it’d help the reader to know which acronym each person worked for). Maclean also displays a westerners reflexive distrust of the federal government, so every rule and protocol of the BLM and USFS is viewed with distrust. I’m fine with a healthy cynicism of governmental operations, but it’s a bit reductive to assume that every problem stems from federal bureaucracy, when in fact, the bureaucratic rules spring from policy decisions made at much higher levels, and never discussed here.
Maclean does a better job accounting for the various fire crews on Storm King Mountain. He describes the difference between smokejumpers and “hotshots”, and provides a short introduction to their training. Again, however, I thought more was required. These fire crews are often referred to as “elite,” like they’re the Special Forces of forest fires. That may be the case, but Maclean does not demonstrate that. Aside from rigorous – though not discriminatory – physical requirements, the book is silent about other aspects of their training. Mainly, I was curious as to what classroom education they get about fires. A professional fireman who goes to the fire academy learns fire physics. Did these hotshots have to undergo similar schooling, so they’d know which way a fire would run?
Even on the fire scene, Maclean often disappoints. He never undertakes a rigorous analysis of the on-ground tactics utilized by the smokejumpers and hotshots. The most fateful decision was taken by a smokejumper named Don Mackey, who – despite his own misgivings – had the crews dig a fire line downhill. Maclean seems hesitant to touch this tactical approach with a ten-foot pole, likely out of a respect for the dead. He is unable to find a balance between sympathy for the deceased (who, wrong decisions or not, were exceedingly courageous) and an objective failure-analysis. The result is that strategic decisions made by management are underlined, while tactical mistakes made by the firefighters are explained away. This is probably a natural tendency. After all, the firefighters are the ones at risk, and we all know from Dilbert that managers suck, but it makes for an uneven and subtly dishonest retelling.
This is a book greatly in need of more and better maps. Maclean (or his publishers) do provide one master map on the front cover. Unfortunately, the map is static and difficult to read, with important information lost in the book’s crease. In order to get a real idea of the geography and movements of the various crews (some who lived and some who died), I had to refer to the official report on the South Canyon Fire, which is available online. The report includes a number of maps that are clean and relatively easy to interpret.
Fire on the Mountain is at its best when it finally narrows its scope to the heart of the tragedy: the young men and women running for their lives from a terrible blowup. With agency jockeying set aside, Maclean excels in providing a thrilling, heart-racing recreation of a race against fire and wind and a rugged hill.
The firefighters on Storm King Mountain died in two separate places. Two helitacks died together, after deciding not to follow the East Canyon escape route. Their demise is not given a great deal of consideration (possibly because their deaths, while just as sad, are more explicable). Instead, the focus is on the other group – twelve men and women comprising both smokejumpers and the Prineville Hotshots – who died together trying to reach the top of Hell’s Gate Ridge. Maclean undertakes an examination of their final moments. It is an effecting recreation, but unfortunately, Maclean does not (unlike his father) give much in the way of explanation for supporting it.
This was a book I liked but of which I wanted more. This is not simply a matter of the son falling short of his father’s book. It is a matter of the son falling short of his father’s talent. As I said before, I don’t expect or want the young Maclean to imitate his dad’s inimitable style. But I do expect better narrative coherence. After all, we have the benefit of hindsight – use it. Characters wander in and out of the story and many threads are left dangling. This feels like a pared down version of a deeper, richer story.
The central drama, upon which the book rests, loses much of its impact because Maclean isn’t able to make the progression of events clear. He does only an adequate job of laying out the spatial dimensions and the pertinent timeline.
Following a disaster, we look for the silver lining, the good that can come from the bad. After Mann Gulch, after Storm King Mountain, and probably after Yarnell, someone will say that lessons will be learned from this, so it doesn’t happen again.
Of course, it will happen again – though this is seldom acknowledged. We know what we know about fighting fires for hundreds of years. Today we have up-to-the-second weather reports, aerial and satellite imagery, wireless communications, and an advanced understanding about the nature of fire. But there will still be deaths, and those deaths will be borne by the young and seemingly indestructible, because as Hemingway knew, the world kills quickest those it cannot break.
Norman Maclean knew this when he wrote that his story about young, dead smokejumpers “could be called the story of a tragedy, but tragedy would be only a part of it, as it is of life.”
*The greatest disaster ballad ever, with due respect to Gordon Lightfoot and the Edmund Fitzgerald.
** Jeff Shaara, for one, has no such compunctions. And even though he’s written 1,000 books that ape father Michael Shaara’s stream-of-conscious style, none of them come close to The Killer Angels
-- from Cold Missouri Waters*
In James Keelaghan’s mournful ballad about the 1949 Mann Gulch fire, he takes the point of view of Wag Dodge, the surviving foreman of an elite group of smokejumpers, thirteen of whom died on the mountain. In the song, Dodge is dying of cancer just a few years after the blowup. He is asked to explain – to rationalize – his now-famous command decision: with a firestorm at his back, and no chance to outrun it, Dodge lit a backfire in front of himself, and then lay down in the still-warm ashes. The fire chasing him suffocated in the backfire, and Dodge rose from the ashes, part phoenix and part Job’s servant.
Some hailed Dodge’s quick thinking. Others argued that his seemingly counterintuitive decision – to literally fight fire with fire – confused his men, and forced them into a fatal detour. Right or wrong, Wag Dodge lived and died with his decision. And right or wrong, you cannot deny him this: Wag Dodge was a man who kept his head. With his world shrinking rapidly to a place of heat and flame and poisonous gas, he had the presence of mind to use fire physics against fire itself.
The deaths of wilderness firefighters are thankfully not a common occurrence. But when they do happen, it tends to take lives in bunches. Hotshot crews or smokejumper crews. They die in the teams in which they lived and worked. These crews are not the types of people we see as victims. They are young and strong and brave. They are the kind of people we think will live forever. But when death comes for them - immortality being an illusion - it usually happens not because of the wiliness of fire – fire, after all, is not a supervillain, but is constrained by its triangle of heat, oxygen and fuel – but because of human decisions.
The ghosts of Mann Gulch and the fallibility of human decision-making loom over every page of John Maclean’s Fire on the Mountain, the story of the misnamed and deadly South Canyon Fire, which killed fourteen firefighters in 1994.
This is appropriate for a couple reasons. First, the South Canyon Fire (which actually occurred on Storm King Mountain) shared a similar topography and course as the Mann Gulch Fire. In both cases, winds from a nearby river (the Colorado at South Canyon, the Missouri at Mann Gulch) turned dry gulches into chimneys, propelling fast moving flames uphill. Secondly, Mann Gulch’s most famous chronicler was Maclean’s father, Norman. Norman Maclean, a late-blooming author, spent the last years of his life obsessing over the young men who died in Mann Gulch. As age took its toll, and as his wife suffered her last illness, Norman Maclean’s “fire report” turned into something far different. An elegiacal rumination on youth and old age and what he called the “lonely road to death.”
John Maclean’s account of the South Canyon Fire bears no resemblance to his father’s. That is to his credit. Undoubtedly, he must have been tempted to try on his father’s lyrical, looping prose,** but instead, turns in a sturdy, journalistic account that mostly refrains from the purple grandeur of Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire.
The story begins with a bitter note – a fire that could have been knocked down by a couple of men. Because of jurisdictional squabbles between the Bureau of Land Management, the Forestry Service, and local fire departments, the fire was able to grow and spread.
The first third of Fire on the Mountain is devoted to these squabbles. It is a lot of talk about politics and competing agencies and budgets. This material doesn’t necessarily have to be dry, but it is (I actually gave up on this book once, only coming back to it after the Yarnell Fire disaster). Maclean’s telling lacks focus and structure. He introduces too many people and too many agencies without taking the time to fully explain everyone’s role in the bureaucracy (since Maclean spends little time on personalities, a simple dramatis personae would have been quite helpful; at the least, it’d help the reader to know which acronym each person worked for). Maclean also displays a westerners reflexive distrust of the federal government, so every rule and protocol of the BLM and USFS is viewed with distrust. I’m fine with a healthy cynicism of governmental operations, but it’s a bit reductive to assume that every problem stems from federal bureaucracy, when in fact, the bureaucratic rules spring from policy decisions made at much higher levels, and never discussed here.
Maclean does a better job accounting for the various fire crews on Storm King Mountain. He describes the difference between smokejumpers and “hotshots”, and provides a short introduction to their training. Again, however, I thought more was required. These fire crews are often referred to as “elite,” like they’re the Special Forces of forest fires. That may be the case, but Maclean does not demonstrate that. Aside from rigorous – though not discriminatory – physical requirements, the book is silent about other aspects of their training. Mainly, I was curious as to what classroom education they get about fires. A professional fireman who goes to the fire academy learns fire physics. Did these hotshots have to undergo similar schooling, so they’d know which way a fire would run?
Even on the fire scene, Maclean often disappoints. He never undertakes a rigorous analysis of the on-ground tactics utilized by the smokejumpers and hotshots. The most fateful decision was taken by a smokejumper named Don Mackey, who – despite his own misgivings – had the crews dig a fire line downhill. Maclean seems hesitant to touch this tactical approach with a ten-foot pole, likely out of a respect for the dead. He is unable to find a balance between sympathy for the deceased (who, wrong decisions or not, were exceedingly courageous) and an objective failure-analysis. The result is that strategic decisions made by management are underlined, while tactical mistakes made by the firefighters are explained away. This is probably a natural tendency. After all, the firefighters are the ones at risk, and we all know from Dilbert that managers suck, but it makes for an uneven and subtly dishonest retelling.
This is a book greatly in need of more and better maps. Maclean (or his publishers) do provide one master map on the front cover. Unfortunately, the map is static and difficult to read, with important information lost in the book’s crease. In order to get a real idea of the geography and movements of the various crews (some who lived and some who died), I had to refer to the official report on the South Canyon Fire, which is available online. The report includes a number of maps that are clean and relatively easy to interpret.
Fire on the Mountain is at its best when it finally narrows its scope to the heart of the tragedy: the young men and women running for their lives from a terrible blowup. With agency jockeying set aside, Maclean excels in providing a thrilling, heart-racing recreation of a race against fire and wind and a rugged hill.
The west wind created…eddies when it struck the ridges of Storm King and partially turned back on itself, just as flowing water turns in eddies when it passes rocks…The eddies carried aloft fistfuls of burning duff…Most likely a combination of flames backing down the slope and embers spinning in eddies ignited the initial, small fires in the bottom of the western drainage.
The west wind fanned those fires into a blowup, but to do so, it first had to curl around a mountain and become a south wind. The west wind entered and was intensified by the gorge of the Colorado River, a natural wind tunnel, in a phenomenon known as a venturi effect…Once in the river gorge the surging west wind quickly found an escape valve and turned at a right angle into the mouth of the western drainage, transforming itself into a south wind. It now raced up the narrow V of the drainage, which further compressed and accelerated it.
As the south wind sheared around a turn a half mile up the western drainage, it came upon the spot fires. When the wind struck the flames, they exploded. A thunderous roar arose from the gulch. The transition from a ‘normal’ fire to a blowup took seconds.
Minutes before, the forty-nine firefighters had been ordering gasoline for their saws, taking the fire’s photograph and making a game of the similarities to a legendary killer, the Mann Gulch fire. Then disaster took its unmistakable shape, and the firefighters, almost as one, began a race for their lives.
The firefighters on Storm King Mountain died in two separate places. Two helitacks died together, after deciding not to follow the East Canyon escape route. Their demise is not given a great deal of consideration (possibly because their deaths, while just as sad, are more explicable). Instead, the focus is on the other group – twelve men and women comprising both smokejumpers and the Prineville Hotshots – who died together trying to reach the top of Hell’s Gate Ridge. Maclean undertakes an examination of their final moments. It is an effecting recreation, but unfortunately, Maclean does not (unlike his father) give much in the way of explanation for supporting it.
This was a book I liked but of which I wanted more. This is not simply a matter of the son falling short of his father’s book. It is a matter of the son falling short of his father’s talent. As I said before, I don’t expect or want the young Maclean to imitate his dad’s inimitable style. But I do expect better narrative coherence. After all, we have the benefit of hindsight – use it. Characters wander in and out of the story and many threads are left dangling. This feels like a pared down version of a deeper, richer story.
The central drama, upon which the book rests, loses much of its impact because Maclean isn’t able to make the progression of events clear. He does only an adequate job of laying out the spatial dimensions and the pertinent timeline.
Following a disaster, we look for the silver lining, the good that can come from the bad. After Mann Gulch, after Storm King Mountain, and probably after Yarnell, someone will say that lessons will be learned from this, so it doesn’t happen again.
Of course, it will happen again – though this is seldom acknowledged. We know what we know about fighting fires for hundreds of years. Today we have up-to-the-second weather reports, aerial and satellite imagery, wireless communications, and an advanced understanding about the nature of fire. But there will still be deaths, and those deaths will be borne by the young and seemingly indestructible, because as Hemingway knew, the world kills quickest those it cannot break.
Norman Maclean knew this when he wrote that his story about young, dead smokejumpers “could be called the story of a tragedy, but tragedy would be only a part of it, as it is of life.”
*The greatest disaster ballad ever, with due respect to Gordon Lightfoot and the Edmund Fitzgerald.
** Jeff Shaara, for one, has no such compunctions. And even though he’s written 1,000 books that ape father Michael Shaara’s stream-of-conscious style, none of them come close to The Killer Angels
September 6, 2019
Being a trained wildland firefighter, this was a must read for me. It has been recommended to me by several people over the years. I am glad I took the time to read it. Mr. Maclean presents this unfortunate event carefully and is respectful of those who did not survive. I recommend this book.
April 5, 2017
"Fire on the Mountain", written by John MacLean, is the true story of the 1994 South Canyon forest fire, where 14 firefighters and support personnel lost their lives. It is also a story of inexcusable Federal Government agencies' bureaucratic inter-agency bickering, which allowed the fire to spread and become more deadly. It was the largest wildfire disaster since the Mann Gulch fire of 1949. I believe that while people always want someone to blame in disasters, the Mann Gulch fire had only mother nature to blame. In the South Canyon fire, loss of life was a result of a natural fire "blowup". BUT, there was plenty of human error and blame, mostly bureaucratic, to go around. This is area in Colorado which includes, National Forest land, Bureau of Land Management land as well as local residences (local responsibility). First off, the responsibility for fighting the fire was debated for hours, and in the first day, when the fire could have been easily extinguished, no action was taken. At the time, there existed a National Fire Coordination agency which was established after the Mann Gulch fire, to prevent future loss of life. The agencies bickered over who was in charge of fighting the fire and who could use resources, fire fighter specialists: smoke jumpers and "hot shots", fire equipment, gasoline for chain saws, aircraft for spotting, helicopters for delivering firefighters to inaccessible areas, tankers for delivering fire retardant and large quantities of water. Those that were trying to fight the fire could not have the tools they needed. It was 3 days before resources were brought to bear. In the meantime, the size of the fire had grown. I am enraged at that loss of life due to inaction and turf battles. During and after the investigation, the management teams of the respective agencies, were covering their own butts, and blamed the firefighters. To say I enjoyed the book is not right, but I did find it an eye opening read and recommend it. "Fire on the Mountain" is investigative journalism at its best.
September 25, 2016
The fire on Storm King Mountain in July 1994 (which has gone down to posterity as the South Canyon Fire due to a mistake that feels--with the perfect vision of hindsight--like an omen of all the snowballing mistakes to come) was a clusterfuck of epic proportions. It is also eerily similar to the Mann Gulch fire of 1949 (written about so brilliantly by John Maclean's father Norman Maclean in Young Men and Fire that I have never yet managed to write anything coherent about why I think it is the best American nonfiction book of the twentieth century). John Maclean makes those parallels explicit.
Fire on the Mountain and Young Men and Fire are very different books, writing about the same tragedy happening for different reasons: the Mann Gulch fire killed thirteen smoke-jumpers because nobody knew the warning signs of a blow-up to watch for; the South Canyon fire killed fourteen firefighters (three smoke-jumpers, two helitacks, and nine hotshots), not because nobody knew the signs (Mann Gulch and tragedies like it had taught them those), but because (1) the topography of Storm King Mountain was such that the firefighters couldn't see what the fire was doing; (2) the fire was so mismanaged that the people on the ground were working without the information that might have saved them, the information that would have told them they needed to be watching for a blow-up, and (3) authority, decision-making, and actual knowledge of the fire were separated out in very bad ways. What both tragedies share, aside from the fluke of topography that made them split-second deadly, is critical underestimation of the fire's danger by everyone involved, firefighters on the ground as much as the people sending them out there.
Maclean père's book is about trying to figure out what happened in Mann Gulch, both what people did and why and what the fire did and why. Fire on the Mountain is much more an attempt simply to drag all the pieces of the story out where they can be seen. I do not for an instant think that Maclean fils had an easier job: the overlapping of jurisdictions, authority, and responsibilities between the BLM and the Western Slope Coordination Center never did entirely make sense to me, and it only got worse the more agencies and organizations got involved. It's also very difficult to describe topography in prose. It took me several times through Young Men and Fire before I got a grip on the physical attributes of Mann Gulch, and insofar as I understand Storm King Mountain, it's because I already have at least a rough understanding of Mann Gulch.
This is John Maclean's first book (if I've got his bibliography right), and it shows. He doesn't have the command over his narrative that he demonstrates in The Esperanza Fire: Arson, Murder, and the Agony of Engine 57; there's less clarity, less control. But it's still very good.
Fire on the Mountain and Young Men and Fire are very different books, writing about the same tragedy happening for different reasons: the Mann Gulch fire killed thirteen smoke-jumpers because nobody knew the warning signs of a blow-up to watch for; the South Canyon fire killed fourteen firefighters (three smoke-jumpers, two helitacks, and nine hotshots), not because nobody knew the signs (Mann Gulch and tragedies like it had taught them those), but because (1) the topography of Storm King Mountain was such that the firefighters couldn't see what the fire was doing; (2) the fire was so mismanaged that the people on the ground were working without the information that might have saved them, the information that would have told them they needed to be watching for a blow-up, and (3) authority, decision-making, and actual knowledge of the fire were separated out in very bad ways. What both tragedies share, aside from the fluke of topography that made them split-second deadly, is critical underestimation of the fire's danger by everyone involved, firefighters on the ground as much as the people sending them out there.
Maclean père's book is about trying to figure out what happened in Mann Gulch, both what people did and why and what the fire did and why. Fire on the Mountain is much more an attempt simply to drag all the pieces of the story out where they can be seen. I do not for an instant think that Maclean fils had an easier job: the overlapping of jurisdictions, authority, and responsibilities between the BLM and the Western Slope Coordination Center never did entirely make sense to me, and it only got worse the more agencies and organizations got involved. It's also very difficult to describe topography in prose. It took me several times through Young Men and Fire before I got a grip on the physical attributes of Mann Gulch, and insofar as I understand Storm King Mountain, it's because I already have at least a rough understanding of Mann Gulch.
This is John Maclean's first book (if I've got his bibliography right), and it shows. He doesn't have the command over his narrative that he demonstrates in The Esperanza Fire: Arson, Murder, and the Agony of Engine 57; there's less clarity, less control. But it's still very good.
July 9, 2009
I read this book on the 15th anniversary of the South Canyon Fire, better known as Storm King Mountain. The book tells the story of the intense fire blow up that caused the death of fifteen smokejumpers, hot shots, and helitack crews in one of the worst firefighting disasters in modern history. Maclean uses his investigative journalism skills (he was a reporter and editor for the Chicago Tribune) to go behind the scenes and dig into the root causes of the events. By doing so, he is able to find mistakes made by nearly everyone involved from the leaders in the regional and national land management offices to the firefighting crews on the ground. It was only through the summation of all of these circumstances that the disaster could take place. The book serves as an important, if grim, reminder of how easy it is to become complacent even while performing extraordinarily dangerous work. I recommend the book as an engaging read with excellent writing and a strong lesson to be learned.
September 4, 2025
OK book but it lacked something - that is all I noted seven years ago (2018) and I have felt no need to revise my original assessment. I think I am being kind with two stars and not shelving in any of my 'bad' shelves.
May 28, 2018
It’s been a minute since I’ve gone through a natural disasters phase in terms of my reading material. I remember a while back getting snagged in a substantial period of awe over avalanches (preceded by an obsession with extreme skiing that led me there), but it feels like it’s been a really long time since.
The South Canyon Fire happened in Colorado in 1994 and resulted in the deaths of 14 firefighters. Although there is considerable disagreement between various sources, it seems that avoidable management mistakes and destructive political rivalries among administrative entities were two of the primary causal factors in the tragedy that occurred. Though, of course, no one in administration ever really took responsibility or was held accountable for that… Who’s surprised? (*eye roll*)
One thing that always strikes me about books like this– whether the topic is extreme skiing, avalanche control, mountaineering, sailing, or firefighting– is the complete and total dedication of the people on the ground. It blows my mind that there are humans who love something so much that they’re willing to put their lives on the line over and over and over again to experience the rush of doing something that’s seemingly engrained into their soul.
I’ve always had quite a bit of ADD when it comes to careers and hobbies, so I’ve never understood the experience of falling so head over heels with one particular activity that I just can’t stay away. (Aside from reading, maybe, but that doesn’t really seem like it counts in the same way…) Because it’s so foreign to me, I think I’m just absolutely in awe of people who are capable of such sustained focus that they become experts; and that they are content with the very real possibility of their passion killing them one day.
In this book, these fascinating people are called ‘smokejumpers’ or ‘hotshots,’ which are essentially terms for extreme circumstance wildland firefighters. They parachute into remote areas with an ungodly amount of gear that they then carry with them as they hike, cut down trees, and carve out fire lines to combat wildfires. They’re strong and gutsy as hell, dedicated to the end, and damn good at what they do. We should all go thank a smokejumper, by the way, especially those of us who live in the West where we’re seemingly always on fire somewhere, mostly because one of us idiots did something stupid like light fireworks in kindling in the middle of the hottest, driest month of the year…
Anyway, because these folks are regarded as the experts and rarely sustain significant loss of life on duty, the South Canyon Fire became highly suspect. In Fire on the Mountain, Maclean uses extensive research, interviews, and other materials to piece together the true story; or the closest we may ever come to the truth, that is.
This book is informative, riveting, and– in the end– quite sad. It reminds us, once again, that if we don’t remember history we’re doomed to repeat it. It also reminds us that big bureaucracies are not only irritating with their red tape and endless drama, but also literally life threatening when we’re dealing with broken systems in emergency situations.
The South Canyon Fire happened in Colorado in 1994 and resulted in the deaths of 14 firefighters. Although there is considerable disagreement between various sources, it seems that avoidable management mistakes and destructive political rivalries among administrative entities were two of the primary causal factors in the tragedy that occurred. Though, of course, no one in administration ever really took responsibility or was held accountable for that… Who’s surprised? (*eye roll*)
One thing that always strikes me about books like this– whether the topic is extreme skiing, avalanche control, mountaineering, sailing, or firefighting– is the complete and total dedication of the people on the ground. It blows my mind that there are humans who love something so much that they’re willing to put their lives on the line over and over and over again to experience the rush of doing something that’s seemingly engrained into their soul.
I’ve always had quite a bit of ADD when it comes to careers and hobbies, so I’ve never understood the experience of falling so head over heels with one particular activity that I just can’t stay away. (Aside from reading, maybe, but that doesn’t really seem like it counts in the same way…) Because it’s so foreign to me, I think I’m just absolutely in awe of people who are capable of such sustained focus that they become experts; and that they are content with the very real possibility of their passion killing them one day.
In this book, these fascinating people are called ‘smokejumpers’ or ‘hotshots,’ which are essentially terms for extreme circumstance wildland firefighters. They parachute into remote areas with an ungodly amount of gear that they then carry with them as they hike, cut down trees, and carve out fire lines to combat wildfires. They’re strong and gutsy as hell, dedicated to the end, and damn good at what they do. We should all go thank a smokejumper, by the way, especially those of us who live in the West where we’re seemingly always on fire somewhere, mostly because one of us idiots did something stupid like light fireworks in kindling in the middle of the hottest, driest month of the year…
Anyway, because these folks are regarded as the experts and rarely sustain significant loss of life on duty, the South Canyon Fire became highly suspect. In Fire on the Mountain, Maclean uses extensive research, interviews, and other materials to piece together the true story; or the closest we may ever come to the truth, that is.
This book is informative, riveting, and– in the end– quite sad. It reminds us, once again, that if we don’t remember history we’re doomed to repeat it. It also reminds us that big bureaucracies are not only irritating with their red tape and endless drama, but also literally life threatening when we’re dealing with broken systems in emergency situations.
Read
November 12, 2025DNF
Not because it was bad. This book was interesting and well researched; I just didn’t feel like reading about people dying. I’ll probably come back and finish it at different time.
Not because it was bad. This book was interesting and well researched; I just didn’t feel like reading about people dying. I’ll probably come back and finish it at different time.
August 12, 2016
I received this book from my supervisor who gave it to the entire Forest leadership team. As the fire season gets started it's a reminder of so many things that can happen when people drop their guard, make assumptions, and don't speak out. It's also poignant tribute to 14 lives lost nearly 20 years ago; in less than two months the actual anniversary date will be here. I went to college with one of the helitack and I now work for the forest that lost so many.
The book contains excellent descriptions of what was happening on the ground and does it through taped interviews and quotes from many of the survivors. It brings attention to the events that could be interpreted in so many ways but also allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.
The book contains excellent descriptions of what was happening on the ground and does it through taped interviews and quotes from many of the survivors. It brings attention to the events that could be interpreted in so many ways but also allows the reader to draw their own conclusions.
March 17, 2023
It was good the first time I read it and it was better this time. John N. Maclean shares both science and empathy for survivors and casualties of the 1994 South Canyon Fire in book Fire on the Mountain. Read the book to learn about the fire. The book has some conflicting information such as times when events occurred, but those conflicts are minor and reasonable given the task of reconstructing a wildfire’s blow-up. He’s a great storyteller; this book is my favorite of his studies of fatal wildfires.
March 28, 2015
Maybe I shouldn't have read this book just before my husband returns to his summer job as a wildland firefighter, right at the end of one of the driest winters ever in our area of Utah. I do feel like I have a better understanding of what he is experiencing during those weeks he's away. This story was factual, informative and riveting. Well written. And heartbreaking.
February 11, 2025
Fire on the Mountain is a compelling, if some what confused book about the tragedy of the South Canyon Fire. In 1994, 14 firefighters, including 3 Smokejumpers, 9 Prineville Hot Shots, and 2 Helitacks, were killed when the wildfire they were fighting on Storm King Mountain blew up, and overcame a significant portion of the team.
The book is best when it focuses on the men and women who died, especially Don Mackey of the Missoula Smokejumpers. Wildland fire fighting is a tough life. It's a solid, if irregular source of hard cash for tough people from economically depressed western towns. Firefighting has decades of heroic associations, many of which are true. It's about people measuring themselves against immense natural forces, striving at the edge of skill and endurance to save lives. Yet there are immense contradictions in the work. Urban firefighters do save lives, but most calls are simple paramedic incidents. Actually storming into a burning building to pull someone out is rare. Wildfires, by their nature, take place far from human activity. The smart thing to do is to evacuate in a timely manner. Wildland firefighters act mostly to protect property, and the lives that they can save (or doom) are their own.
Yet as someone behind a keyboard, it takes a unique kind of person to jump out of an airplane or climb up a mountain and battle a fire that may be hundreds or thousands of acres with hand tools. The basic work is cutting line, clearing a perimeter of free fuel around the fire so it doesn't spread. The reason why people do it is the purpose, and the people they work besides. Maclean takes us deep into the insular culture of wildland firefighters, and stays as close as he can to the people killed, up to that moment when all knowledge fails. The writing is a moving tribute to the dead.
Yet, the main question of the book is "Why did these people die?". The crude answer is that someone fucked up, and as investigators we have to find out who and why. Starting from the end, the dead failed to flee the fire. While 14 firefighters died, over 30 survived. The people who lived were better positioned and faster to run. Two mistakes belonging to the dead is that they carried their tools far longer than is reasonable, and Mackey going back into the fire to check on the others. Yet, it is hard to fault the urge to support the people you are responsible for, and not abandon the implements of your job. To drop tools and run would be to surrender to panic, and for firefighters to abandon their professional identity.
At another level, the dead should not have been in the position they were in. This is where the narrative begins to falter. I understand that the western flank line, on which 12 of the 14 people died, was an unusual location for a fire line. The firefighters were cutting through dense oak scrub with limited visibility and lookouts were not set. A local weather forecast warned of sudden gusts starting at the exact time the fire blew up, a prediction made that morning which proved accurate within minutes, and which never reached anyone on the mountain. But they key points about the western flank line and the sequence of events desperately needs a good map, and the one at the front of the book lacks scale, time, and the progress of the fire. This is the authorial/editorial choice that knocks this book down from five stars for me.
And at an operational level, wildland firefighting is a lot sloppier than outsiders would expect. Generally, wildfire response faces a problem of scaling. The forces involved on a fire can go from a handful of people and a single helicopter in support to an army of thousands with corresponding air support. Deciding who is in charge and getting everybody up to speed on those changes through the daily and hourly evolution of a fire is a hard problem, and one which the supervisors on the South Canyon Fire absolutely dropped the ball on. While scaling multi-jurisdictional scratch units is always a present challenge, at South Canyon, the two HQs involved, the BLM Grand Junction District and the Western Slope Coordinating Center, cordially (and not so cordially) despised each other, and their decade long feud contributed to getting people killed. These sorts of bureaucratic conflicts can be tricky to write about, and I didn't get much about this one from the book, except that it existed.
And finally, since 1999 when this book has been written, there has been an opened debate about the strategic wisdom of immediate and heavy response to all fires, as has been done in the 20th century. The American West is a pyroscape, an ecology evolved to burn regularly. A century of fuel suppression has meant that what would have been a more-or-less harmless creeping ground fire now has enough fuel to explode up in a devastating firestorm. The canyons full of dry wood and leaves that the firefighters hacked through, and which ultimately killed them, were the consequence of a century of "victory" over fire.
At 25 years on, Fire on the Mountain has not aged into a true classic. It's of the 90s, without explaining the 90s to those who weren't there. The book is good, but the absence of a comprehensive map is inexplicable.
EDIT: https://coloradofirecamp.com/south-canyon-fire/chronology.htm has a chronology with good maps and a clearer technical explanation.
The book is best when it focuses on the men and women who died, especially Don Mackey of the Missoula Smokejumpers. Wildland fire fighting is a tough life. It's a solid, if irregular source of hard cash for tough people from economically depressed western towns. Firefighting has decades of heroic associations, many of which are true. It's about people measuring themselves against immense natural forces, striving at the edge of skill and endurance to save lives. Yet there are immense contradictions in the work. Urban firefighters do save lives, but most calls are simple paramedic incidents. Actually storming into a burning building to pull someone out is rare. Wildfires, by their nature, take place far from human activity. The smart thing to do is to evacuate in a timely manner. Wildland firefighters act mostly to protect property, and the lives that they can save (or doom) are their own.
Yet as someone behind a keyboard, it takes a unique kind of person to jump out of an airplane or climb up a mountain and battle a fire that may be hundreds or thousands of acres with hand tools. The basic work is cutting line, clearing a perimeter of free fuel around the fire so it doesn't spread. The reason why people do it is the purpose, and the people they work besides. Maclean takes us deep into the insular culture of wildland firefighters, and stays as close as he can to the people killed, up to that moment when all knowledge fails. The writing is a moving tribute to the dead.
Yet, the main question of the book is "Why did these people die?". The crude answer is that someone fucked up, and as investigators we have to find out who and why. Starting from the end, the dead failed to flee the fire. While 14 firefighters died, over 30 survived. The people who lived were better positioned and faster to run. Two mistakes belonging to the dead is that they carried their tools far longer than is reasonable, and Mackey going back into the fire to check on the others. Yet, it is hard to fault the urge to support the people you are responsible for, and not abandon the implements of your job. To drop tools and run would be to surrender to panic, and for firefighters to abandon their professional identity.
At another level, the dead should not have been in the position they were in. This is where the narrative begins to falter. I understand that the western flank line, on which 12 of the 14 people died, was an unusual location for a fire line. The firefighters were cutting through dense oak scrub with limited visibility and lookouts were not set. A local weather forecast warned of sudden gusts starting at the exact time the fire blew up, a prediction made that morning which proved accurate within minutes, and which never reached anyone on the mountain. But they key points about the western flank line and the sequence of events desperately needs a good map, and the one at the front of the book lacks scale, time, and the progress of the fire. This is the authorial/editorial choice that knocks this book down from five stars for me.
And at an operational level, wildland firefighting is a lot sloppier than outsiders would expect. Generally, wildfire response faces a problem of scaling. The forces involved on a fire can go from a handful of people and a single helicopter in support to an army of thousands with corresponding air support. Deciding who is in charge and getting everybody up to speed on those changes through the daily and hourly evolution of a fire is a hard problem, and one which the supervisors on the South Canyon Fire absolutely dropped the ball on. While scaling multi-jurisdictional scratch units is always a present challenge, at South Canyon, the two HQs involved, the BLM Grand Junction District and the Western Slope Coordinating Center, cordially (and not so cordially) despised each other, and their decade long feud contributed to getting people killed. These sorts of bureaucratic conflicts can be tricky to write about, and I didn't get much about this one from the book, except that it existed.
And finally, since 1999 when this book has been written, there has been an opened debate about the strategic wisdom of immediate and heavy response to all fires, as has been done in the 20th century. The American West is a pyroscape, an ecology evolved to burn regularly. A century of fuel suppression has meant that what would have been a more-or-less harmless creeping ground fire now has enough fuel to explode up in a devastating firestorm. The canyons full of dry wood and leaves that the firefighters hacked through, and which ultimately killed them, were the consequence of a century of "victory" over fire.
At 25 years on, Fire on the Mountain has not aged into a true classic. It's of the 90s, without explaining the 90s to those who weren't there. The book is good, but the absence of a comprehensive map is inexplicable.
EDIT: https://coloradofirecamp.com/south-canyon-fire/chronology.htm has a chronology with good maps and a clearer technical explanation.
June 5, 2018
A thorough accounting of the events of the South Canyon Fire and its aftermath. It was tough to put down.
February 18, 2020
"Fire on the Mountain" is the first of five (soon to be six) books on fatal wildland fires by John Maclean, son of Norman Maclean (Young Men and Fire). While "Fire on the Mountain" feels, in some ways, indeed like the first of a series (e.g., the storytelling isn't quite as refined as later books, and the complexity of the narrative is harder to follow), it remains a rich investigation into what happened on a tragic day in Colorado.
To cut to the chase, there's a single question that animates the whole book: did the lives lost result from the decisions of the firefighters themselves or from the management above them? Maclean shares a great deal of the perspective of both, though I'm left wishing for a little more clarity. In many ways, it feels as though Maclean isn't terribly clear in which way he lands on this question - or at least willing to tell us. Electing to tell the story from a more neutral view (i.e., as a "firefighters say, managers say, investigation said") certainly makes sense for someone desiring to maintain access to the community, but it lacks a little bit of the bite that I wished for in his analysis.
For instance, we're faced with a number of problematic decisions on both sides (e.g., the slow response to the fire when it could have likely been contained in the first several days, and the decision to build a fire-line downhill of the flames). But, the analysis never really 'lands' on these. We never really learn why it is that the response was so slow, other than some gesticulations of blame towards managers. And, we never really dig into the decisions of the firefighters to build the line in what seems, in retrospect, to be an obviously unsafe location. In other words, then, Maclean has done a relatively nice job of telling the story of the event... but not in a way that improves upon the investigations he criticizes.
One other huge frustration: we need better maps, and we need a progression of maps. Because Maclean has elected to follow so many characters through the story, we need visuals to help us understand where each of them are and when. Instead, we get one low quality map that doesn't really explain what time period it refers to.
Of course, these faults do not outweigh the good of the book. As Maclean comes into his own in subsequent volumes, he establishes himself as an effective storyteller around wildfire. But, I suppose I wish for the very thing he can't give us without jeopardizing his access to future material: a more critical and courageous analysis of what actually happened; an analysis more informed by some psychological and human factors work; and the documentation required to really help avoid these tragedies in the future without simply resort to truisms (communicate more! follow the procedures!).
To cut to the chase, there's a single question that animates the whole book: did the lives lost result from the decisions of the firefighters themselves or from the management above them? Maclean shares a great deal of the perspective of both, though I'm left wishing for a little more clarity. In many ways, it feels as though Maclean isn't terribly clear in which way he lands on this question - or at least willing to tell us. Electing to tell the story from a more neutral view (i.e., as a "firefighters say, managers say, investigation said") certainly makes sense for someone desiring to maintain access to the community, but it lacks a little bit of the bite that I wished for in his analysis.
For instance, we're faced with a number of problematic decisions on both sides (e.g., the slow response to the fire when it could have likely been contained in the first several days, and the decision to build a fire-line downhill of the flames). But, the analysis never really 'lands' on these. We never really learn why it is that the response was so slow, other than some gesticulations of blame towards managers. And, we never really dig into the decisions of the firefighters to build the line in what seems, in retrospect, to be an obviously unsafe location. In other words, then, Maclean has done a relatively nice job of telling the story of the event... but not in a way that improves upon the investigations he criticizes.
One other huge frustration: we need better maps, and we need a progression of maps. Because Maclean has elected to follow so many characters through the story, we need visuals to help us understand where each of them are and when. Instead, we get one low quality map that doesn't really explain what time period it refers to.
Of course, these faults do not outweigh the good of the book. As Maclean comes into his own in subsequent volumes, he establishes himself as an effective storyteller around wildfire. But, I suppose I wish for the very thing he can't give us without jeopardizing his access to future material: a more critical and courageous analysis of what actually happened; an analysis more informed by some psychological and human factors work; and the documentation required to really help avoid these tragedies in the future without simply resort to truisms (communicate more! follow the procedures!).
March 9, 2025
Moving, informative, honoring and well written. I think this book is a great glimpse into wildland firefighting (obviously this is an extreme, rare occurrence), natural fire behaviors, and the complexity of fighting and administrating them, as well as the commitment of the families and loved ones of wildland firefighters.
As someone close to several who work in and around wildland fire in numerous capacities, I was worried this book would scare me. In many ways, it did the opposite. I think Maclean did a fantastic job gathering information and writing the book around them. The natural causes and progression of the fire was very well integrated with the human / human error side of this tragedy. The Storm King 14 and their families were honored in the writing.
I do wish that some of the survivors stories were expanded on a bit more. For example, I was so intrigued on Longanecker’s (eventual smokejumping LEGEND) role, escape, and future after the author described where he was right before the blowup, but then there isn’t much after that except his survival status. I’m sure touching on every firefighter would’ve made this book significantly longer, but it would be interesting to see who stayed in fire in whatever capacity, who left, and what they did.
As someone close to several who work in and around wildland fire in numerous capacities, I was worried this book would scare me. In many ways, it did the opposite. I think Maclean did a fantastic job gathering information and writing the book around them. The natural causes and progression of the fire was very well integrated with the human / human error side of this tragedy. The Storm King 14 and their families were honored in the writing.
I do wish that some of the survivors stories were expanded on a bit more. For example, I was so intrigued on Longanecker’s (eventual smokejumping LEGEND) role, escape, and future after the author described where he was right before the blowup, but then there isn’t much after that except his survival status. I’m sure touching on every firefighter would’ve made this book significantly longer, but it would be interesting to see who stayed in fire in whatever capacity, who left, and what they did.
August 12, 2019
Another great book about a real life tragedy. This book details the tragic fire that occurred on Storm King Mountain, near Grand Junction Colorado.
This fire is continually studied and analyzed in an effort for current Wildland fire fighters to learn and survive future events.
I put off reading this book for some time, for reasons I won’t get into here, but finally listened to the book.
Great job writing this story. This is a great book full of details and doesn’t shy from the real story. Doesn’t ignore mistakes or criticisms.
I’ve tried to make it a point to read books about firefighter fatalities in an effort to memorialize the fallen. I want personal information about who they were to honor them. To avoid making them another number. This book does not dig too deep into personal lives, but does offer some small glimpses, which I enjoyed. I will be looking for other books that may have more info in that area.
This one covers the tragedy in great detail, as far as the info is available.
Some day soon, I’m going to go home this area and visit these memorials.
This fire is continually studied and analyzed in an effort for current Wildland fire fighters to learn and survive future events.
I put off reading this book for some time, for reasons I won’t get into here, but finally listened to the book.
Great job writing this story. This is a great book full of details and doesn’t shy from the real story. Doesn’t ignore mistakes or criticisms.
I’ve tried to make it a point to read books about firefighter fatalities in an effort to memorialize the fallen. I want personal information about who they were to honor them. To avoid making them another number. This book does not dig too deep into personal lives, but does offer some small glimpses, which I enjoyed. I will be looking for other books that may have more info in that area.
This one covers the tragedy in great detail, as far as the info is available.
Some day soon, I’m going to go home this area and visit these memorials.
February 7, 2023
Growing up in Colorado, I remember hearing about Storm King when I was 10. Ever since, every time I drive past that area I look up and wonder what happened to all those incredibly brave souls.
This book does a phenomenal job of piecing the events together. It is written with honesty but also with a very sincere admiration and respect for everyone involved.
This book does a phenomenal job of piecing the events together. It is written with honesty but also with a very sincere admiration and respect for everyone involved.
August 3, 2021
Harrowing. About a forest fire in the Colorado Rockies that, through misjudgment and mis management led to the deaths of 14 firefighters. It was hard to read and lft me deeply sad.
September 12, 2018
this nonfiction book about the true events of the south canyon fire was many things to me it was intriguing ,informational ,captivating and many more things its probably the second best thing that i have read in the last year I was completely hooked by the third page John N. Maclean really did a fantastic job when putting this book together
September 13, 2012
I like reading failure analysis books. I think understanding the complex moving parts that seem so small in the moment and add up makes me a better writer, possibly a more conscientious person.
This book is a narrative about bad decisions that seemed only a little bad at the time, and added up to something catastrophic. The weather, the decision-making structure, the equipment, the decisions on the ground, they all added up to something that we call an accident. And it was an accident, in many ways. No one person is to blame, none of it was directly foreseeable, and yet we can learn so many ways to do it better.
Maclean is inclined to come down a bit harder on the BLM than the firefighters, but overall, it does not feel like anyone is excused from their poor judgment. I could have lived without the hokey numerology.
I especially liked MacLean's focus on the impact of the deaths on the community. I was a senior in high school in 1994, and knew kids on hot shot teams. One friend ran the radios for her dad's crew, another was funding college. I think a shudder went through the whole ecosystem of wildfire fighters when Storm King happened. This was not your father's Mann Gulch, this was people we knew, at least in type. We could see their sports records in our gyms, and their sisters in our class.
There's a Red Flag Watch up in my hometown today, and it seems good to remember what we have learned and keep re-learning.
Read if: You also like failure analysis, you are interested in descriptions of the chance that causes people to live or die.
Skip if: Reading about the death of people just trying to do their job is going to bother you.
Also read: Norman MacLean's Fire and Young Men. Godforsaken Sea.
This book is a narrative about bad decisions that seemed only a little bad at the time, and added up to something catastrophic. The weather, the decision-making structure, the equipment, the decisions on the ground, they all added up to something that we call an accident. And it was an accident, in many ways. No one person is to blame, none of it was directly foreseeable, and yet we can learn so many ways to do it better.
Maclean is inclined to come down a bit harder on the BLM than the firefighters, but overall, it does not feel like anyone is excused from their poor judgment. I could have lived without the hokey numerology.
I especially liked MacLean's focus on the impact of the deaths on the community. I was a senior in high school in 1994, and knew kids on hot shot teams. One friend ran the radios for her dad's crew, another was funding college. I think a shudder went through the whole ecosystem of wildfire fighters when Storm King happened. This was not your father's Mann Gulch, this was people we knew, at least in type. We could see their sports records in our gyms, and their sisters in our class.
There's a Red Flag Watch up in my hometown today, and it seems good to remember what we have learned and keep re-learning.
Read if: You also like failure analysis, you are interested in descriptions of the chance that causes people to live or die.
Skip if: Reading about the death of people just trying to do their job is going to bother you.
Also read: Norman MacLean's Fire and Young Men. Godforsaken Sea.
February 27, 2022
As a young person who is avidly interested in the wildland firefighting profession, I found John Maclean’s book, Fire on the Mountain, to be captivating and enlightening. He graciously and respectfully shares the tragic story of the fourteen firefighters who lost their lives in 1994 on the infamous South Canyon Fire – an event that could have easily been prevented.
Maclean gives thorough details providing different perspectives of each person involved directly and indirectly with the incident. He recounts the story in a natural, sensible flow, explaining what happened before, during, and after the fire. Maclean also acknowledges the lessons learned from this catastrophe without pointing any direct fingers and keeping dignities intact. While I haven't entered the firefighting field yet, I am so grateful that I read this book.
From the first page, I was deeply invested in following Maclean as he examined the South Canyon Fire and all its problems; I was captivated, unable to set the book down. I highly recommend Fire on the Mountain to any individual who is a wildland firefighter or anyone who is interested in becoming one. Maclean’s expert storytelling left me with a new awareness of the importance of proper incident management practices and the erratic nature of fire, as well as a deep respect and reverence for those brave firefighters who died on Storm King Mountain.
Maclean gives thorough details providing different perspectives of each person involved directly and indirectly with the incident. He recounts the story in a natural, sensible flow, explaining what happened before, during, and after the fire. Maclean also acknowledges the lessons learned from this catastrophe without pointing any direct fingers and keeping dignities intact. While I haven't entered the firefighting field yet, I am so grateful that I read this book.
From the first page, I was deeply invested in following Maclean as he examined the South Canyon Fire and all its problems; I was captivated, unable to set the book down. I highly recommend Fire on the Mountain to any individual who is a wildland firefighter or anyone who is interested in becoming one. Maclean’s expert storytelling left me with a new awareness of the importance of proper incident management practices and the erratic nature of fire, as well as a deep respect and reverence for those brave firefighters who died on Storm King Mountain.
October 12, 2015
This non-fiction book has been on my shelf since 2000. We bought it from the author when he spoke at a Fire Department Awards Banquet. My husband has read it, he was a volunteer fireman for 20 years and on the Honor Guard of our local county fire department.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I know the outcome of the South Canyon Fire near Glenwood Springs CO. I remember the summer of 1994. John McLean did a great job of piecing the puzzle together from all the agency reports, the survivor interviews and the media coverage. Through this book, you get to know the firefighters involved, both survivors and victims. Though the story is indeed sad, this book was written with compassion, with caring and without condemnation.
Just a side note, my husband and I visited the memorial at Two River Park in Glenwood Springs several years after the fire. I think it was 1999. It is a moving tribute to those firefighters. If you want to learn more there are several links to site about the fire and the memorial. Just type "Storm King Mountain Fire" in your web browser. I am not going to suggest any particular link as all have a different take on the tragedy.
I really enjoyed reading this book. I know the outcome of the South Canyon Fire near Glenwood Springs CO. I remember the summer of 1994. John McLean did a great job of piecing the puzzle together from all the agency reports, the survivor interviews and the media coverage. Through this book, you get to know the firefighters involved, both survivors and victims. Though the story is indeed sad, this book was written with compassion, with caring and without condemnation.
Just a side note, my husband and I visited the memorial at Two River Park in Glenwood Springs several years after the fire. I think it was 1999. It is a moving tribute to those firefighters. If you want to learn more there are several links to site about the fire and the memorial. Just type "Storm King Mountain Fire" in your web browser. I am not going to suggest any particular link as all have a different take on the tragedy.
November 10, 2008
John's father (Norm) did a great job of explaing the fire situation and the decisions made by firefighters on the Mann Gulch fire (see young Men and Fire). In Fire On the Mountain, this book seemed to target blaming people rather than learning why and the research behind the fire activity.
I would have loved more detail on the smokejumpers who deployed and survived-- and why that worked. Or on Longanecker and where he went-- could that have been a viable option for those who ran if it was better communicated? What about the fact that these guys likely died from a wave of heat, not fire? The book seemed to depend on attitudes based on interviews than providing real perspective into the lives and decisions.
Of course, I am biased because we've all made mistakes (on the ground and as managers) and I'm sensitive to getting blamed. but is the point of this book to sell copies, or like young Men and Fire transcend fire and becoming a lesson?
I tried to read this book when it came out and put it down disappointed. I picked it back up for a class.... I'm still disappointed.
I would have loved more detail on the smokejumpers who deployed and survived-- and why that worked. Or on Longanecker and where he went-- could that have been a viable option for those who ran if it was better communicated? What about the fact that these guys likely died from a wave of heat, not fire? The book seemed to depend on attitudes based on interviews than providing real perspective into the lives and decisions.
Of course, I am biased because we've all made mistakes (on the ground and as managers) and I'm sensitive to getting blamed. but is the point of this book to sell copies, or like young Men and Fire transcend fire and becoming a lesson?
I tried to read this book when it came out and put it down disappointed. I picked it back up for a class.... I'm still disappointed.
March 14, 2016
I first heard of the South Canyon Fire and the story of the Hotshot Crew and Smokejumpers who died on Storm King Mountain when I went through Wildland Firefighting training back in 1996. At the time, the incident was still freshly implanted in everybody's mind. Though some of the official reports had been filed and a reinforcement of the fire safety rules was at the forefront of the training, the story of what happened on that mountain had only been partially told at that time. With John N. MacLean's book, everything comes together to show how this disaster could have been entirely avoided if people at various agencies had been doing their jobs and instituting true "interagency cooperation." The book is accurate. The book is not a rehash of dry post-incident reports and the narrative is both suspenseful and entirely realistic. MacLean is not only a good writer, he's a good historian too. I rarely give out 5-star ratings, but this is one of the few that warrant that level of attention.
December 2, 2022
I was naturally drawn to this story because my father was a wildland firefighter for his entire professional career -- yet I've never read a book about the subject. After coming across three copies at our last book sale fundraiser, I grabbed them and successfully convinced my Audubon chapter's book club to make it a selection. I'm excited to hear what they thought.
For me, I practically devoured this book. I thought it read like a Hollywood movie. Like all great catastrophes I've been involved in, it took a cascading sequence of errors and at any point a better decision by even one person would have led to a vastly different outcome.
Huge thanks to both McLeans for authoring books that shine a light on the dangers of the job and certainly must have resulted in new safety considerations in the following years. And, of course, thanks to the firefighters for all they do, year in and year out.
For me, I practically devoured this book. I thought it read like a Hollywood movie. Like all great catastrophes I've been involved in, it took a cascading sequence of errors and at any point a better decision by even one person would have led to a vastly different outcome.
Huge thanks to both McLeans for authoring books that shine a light on the dangers of the job and certainly must have resulted in new safety considerations in the following years. And, of course, thanks to the firefighters for all they do, year in and year out.
August 6, 2012
I'm re-reading this b/c of the resent catastrophic wildfires in Colorado that destroyed 600 homes on the eastern front range. There were 9 fires burning in the state at the time (2012) and it seemed like the governments' actions were fast and efficient - unlike what went on in 1994 in Colorado when 38 fires were burning on July 4th; but none nearly as large or catastrophic as what was going on here in June of 2012. Now, it seemed as though there was no lack of resources (firefighters, engines, tankers, helicopters, money,) and cooperation within and between agencies to fight the fires. Maybe Maclean's book is the reason why. Maybe writing a book can make a difference. :-) This is a gripping story, well written and researched. For those whose home was saved by the firefighting efforts (men & machines) - thank the writer John N. Maclean.
September 21, 2015
This book is a summary and account of a wildfire that took place in western Colorado during the summer of 1994. This fire killed over a dozen firefighters including a number of women and the substance of the book is to document the errors in judgement, the folly of the agencies involved and the pure bad luck and timing of weather and judgement that led to this disaster. This is not entertainment, it is a tedious documentary of the facts as related to the author of this tragic situation. I believe that its main audience would be for those families involved in this ordeal, residents of the area or those involved in the business of fighting wildfires.
May 8, 2015
A horrifying tale of tragedy the made me sick to my stomach, yet I could not stop reading. The staggering amount of miscommunication, poor judgement and lack of cooperation between government agency officials is disgusting, and cost 14 people their lives. I have a new appreciation for the men and women who fight wildland fire. It takes a huge amount of courage, physical strength and endurance. Fire fighting is tough enough... but to do it while climbing rugged, remote terrain, surrounded by fire and with few escape routes... Those are heroes!!!
May 7, 2024
Excellent read
January 6, 2023
Conclusion: don't mind me taking issue with how gender is handled in this book, otherwise, it seems like a well investigated and written book
Overall, this was a pretty decent book. I don't know how it would read if you weren't in fire, but for someone with fire knowledge, it's not too cumbersome. Though I will say, the description of smoke jumpers as a pride of lions with "skin taut even around the belly and muscles cut in high relief" made me a bit nauseous, but we had great fun reading it to the whole crew.
The thing about the women was weird. I am aware that I mark ever mention of women in fire, hungry to know about those who have come before me, so I thought it was just my confirmation bias. However, the comment from Don Mackay's mother that "he was a flirt, he really liked women, and he did it for the women" left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Maybe it's just defensiveness, but there's a small part of me that felt like that was an attack on the women and that they were being held responsible for Mackay's decision. Instead of dissipating, this feeling was only reinforced by the sidebar into unsubstantiated claims that women slowed the escaping group down. While Maclean's intention appears to be to disprove this claim, his milktoast conclusion that "there is no convincing evidence that Thrash and Roth slowed down, or needed to, for the women" is overshadowed by his opening anecdotal evidence that in 1948 Israelis pulled women from combat because it "reduced unit effectiveness". I just finished a book about Russian women who fought in all parts of the military in WWII, so this is perhaps on my mind. However, women are currently allowed in all combat positions in the IDF and the US military. I'm not sure if this was just to demonstrate the potential mentality of men on the fireline or what the purpose was, but I'm not getting the connection between the military choice in Israel in 1948 and US men in 1994.
The lesson I learned from this book is that before this fire, firefighters were trained to enter their fire shelters with their packs, full of fuel and fusies (rather flammable) and this fire changed that protocol. This does explain why Maclean never got to the subject of whether the fatalities could have been avoided if they had all dropped their packs the way we are trained to now.
Overall, this was a pretty decent book. I don't know how it would read if you weren't in fire, but for someone with fire knowledge, it's not too cumbersome. Though I will say, the description of smoke jumpers as a pride of lions with "skin taut even around the belly and muscles cut in high relief" made me a bit nauseous, but we had great fun reading it to the whole crew.
The thing about the women was weird. I am aware that I mark ever mention of women in fire, hungry to know about those who have come before me, so I thought it was just my confirmation bias. However, the comment from Don Mackay's mother that "he was a flirt, he really liked women, and he did it for the women" left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. Maybe it's just defensiveness, but there's a small part of me that felt like that was an attack on the women and that they were being held responsible for Mackay's decision. Instead of dissipating, this feeling was only reinforced by the sidebar into unsubstantiated claims that women slowed the escaping group down. While Maclean's intention appears to be to disprove this claim, his milktoast conclusion that "there is no convincing evidence that Thrash and Roth slowed down, or needed to, for the women" is overshadowed by his opening anecdotal evidence that in 1948 Israelis pulled women from combat because it "reduced unit effectiveness". I just finished a book about Russian women who fought in all parts of the military in WWII, so this is perhaps on my mind. However, women are currently allowed in all combat positions in the IDF and the US military. I'm not sure if this was just to demonstrate the potential mentality of men on the fireline or what the purpose was, but I'm not getting the connection between the military choice in Israel in 1948 and US men in 1994.
The lesson I learned from this book is that before this fire, firefighters were trained to enter their fire shelters with their packs, full of fuel and fusies (rather flammable) and this fire changed that protocol. This does explain why Maclean never got to the subject of whether the fatalities could have been avoided if they had all dropped their packs the way we are trained to now.
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