Young Men and Fire is a 1992 non-fiction book written by Norman Maclean. It is Maclean's story of his quest to understand the Mann Gulch fire of 1949 and how it led to the deaths of 13 wildland firefighters, 12 of them members of the USFS Smokejumpers. The fire occurred in Mann Gulch in Montana's Gates of the Mountains Wilderness on August 5. The book was a national bestseller and won the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award for general non-fiction.
Synopsis
Young Men and Fire is structured in three parts. In part 1, Maclean gives a minute-by-minute account of the unusual "blowup" that trapped the Smokejumpers in Mann Gulch. Part 2 tells of Maclean's attempt to find meaning in the disaster by understanding the Smokejumpers' decisions and the fire's behavior: "If there is a story in Mann Gulch", he writes near the beginning of part 2, "it will take something of a storyteller to find it."
Central to the book is the decision by the Smokejumpers' foreman R. Wagner "Wag" Dodge to light an "escape fire" ahead of the main fire that his men were trying to outrun. Dodge survived by lying down in the ashes of his fire as the main fire passed over him. Maclean set out to learn whether some of the Smokejumpers were killed or cut off by Dodge's fire, as some of their families alleged. In part 2, Maclean returns to Mann Gulch with the two living survivors of the fire and his research assistant Laird Robinson, himself a former Smokejumper. From his observations in Mann Gulch, the testimony of witnesses, the research of fire scientists, and his imaginative reconstruction of the dead Smokejumpers' final moments, Maclean attempts to answer the question of Dodge's culpability and, more broadly, to give the Mann Gulch catastrophe the shape and consolation of tragedy. Part 3 is a short coda that one critic describes as "an imaginative funeral service and benediction".
Maclean and Robinson, in their attempt to forensically analyze the Mann Gulch Fire, bring together multiple sources, including the official report of the United States Forest Service of the fire, the testimony of the three men who fought the fire and lived, and the research and report of Robert Jansson and Harry T. Gisborne (who would suffer a fatal heart attack at Mann Gulch two months later trying to get to the bottom of the tragedy). On the day of the fire, Jansson was ranger on duty of the Helena National Forest's Canyon Ferry District, the area that included Mann Gulch. Maclean and Robinson also take Walter Rumsey and Robert Sallee, the only two living survivors of the fire team (as survivor Wag Dodge died in 1955), back to the scene of the fire in 1978, hoping that walking the ground again would help solve some of the missing pieces. Additionally, Maclean and Robinson use the modern Fire Lab and their mathematical analysis (advances in fire methodology not available in 1949), to search for answers to the fire.
With all of these pieces, several trips to Mann Gulch, and ideas exchanged between Bud Moore, Ed Heilman, Richard Rothermel, Frank Albini, and other members of the U.S. Forest Service forest fire investigators, Maclean and Robinson come to new conclusions on the fire's behavior: that the wind went in the opposite direction than was originally thought possible, and once the fire got started, it created its own unique weather system (which few thought possible before this research).
It was always assumed that the wind was traveling south, or upstream, on the Missouri River at that time of day. Instead, they proved that the wind was traveling north, or downriver, and that the top of the ridge (which juts out as the river bends sharply to the northwest and separates Mann Gulch and Meriwether Canyon) split this downriver wind in two. These two separate smaller winds then re-converged (on the other side of the ridge) in the heart of the gulch (at right angles). This convergence combined with massive heat, produced by the fire and the hot August afternoon.
Additionally, the vegetation pattern played a part in how the fire developed and took the lives of the men. The south side of the gulch was of the mountains, with taller forested trees, but the north side of the gulch was of the plains, with smaller trees and dense grasses. This combination of contrasting vegetation, heat, air currents, and right-angle winds, would cause the fire to change direction instantly, trapping and killing most of the fire fighters in its path.
By the end of their investigation, Maclean and Robinson conclude that Dodge's escape fire was not culpable in the Smokejumpers' deaths.