John N. Maclean’s keynote at Firehouse World

John Maclean
John N. Maclean, photo: Brian Lawdermilk

Author John N. Maclean was the keynote speaker at Firehouse World 2010 which opened Tuesday in San Diego, California. Here is an excerpt from an article at Firehouse.com about Mr. Maclean’s talk:

“…The keynote address was provided by writer John Maclean, author of three wildfire disaster books including Fire on the Mountain. His talk, entitled “The New Arson Precedent,” reviewed the case of the Esperanza Fire, which killed five Calif. firefighters in 2006. Maclean discussed how the 2009 arson case — the first in which an arsonist has ever been convicted of murder for setting a wildland fire — now serves as a legal precedent and an anti-crime tool to combat arson.

Through his discussion, Maclean told the story of the Esperanza fire and the ensuing trial of arsonist Raymond Oyler, sometimes reading notes for what will become his next book. Much of the story to be told is in the change of U.S. culture which led to the evolution of punishment for setting fires in the wild, Maclean explained.

“There was a time when lots of guys set fires in the backcountry and it was tolerated by the community,” he said, for clearing land and other purposes. “It was almost an acceptable practice. However the coming of the wildland-urban interface has changed all that, starting in the 70s.”

Maclean showed how this first-time conviction was part of a much larger movement for accountability — not only with wildfires, but in the greater legal world. “Firefighters are seeing it themselves for what is seen as negligence at fire scenes,” he said. “It’s a real checkerboard [of good and bad],” he said.

Maclean discussed previous, related arson cases, to exhibit how different circumstances and changing times have led to vastly different outcomes. For example, in the 1953 Rattlesnake Fire, which killed 15 firefighters in Calif., the arsonist was caught and confessed, but a grand jury refused to indict him for murder, as they thought it was too indirect. The arsonist served a number of years for willful burning but was then released and went to live in the same area.

After the Hayman Fire in Colorado in 2002, which did not kill anyone, the forest service employee charged with the crime received two consecutive six-year terms. It was later reduced and the arsonist served six years.

After the Cedar Fire in Calif. in 2003, a different set of circumstances led to a much lighter sentence. A lost deer hunter set the fire to signal rescuers, and showed extreme contrition for having caused loss of lives. Because there was contrition, and no intention but negligence, he received six months in a halfway house.

“Sentences can be tough, but there’s flex in the system,” Maclean said. He added, “Confession seems to make a big difference in how they’re handled.”

In another recent case, Maclean noted, the death of a wildland firefighter and pilot were squarely attributed to pilot error, but the arsonist still got 15 years for setting the fatal fire.

The arsonist of the Esperanza Fire, Raymond Oyler, was sentenced in 2009 to death, and the case has already been used as a precedent to charge another arsonist with murder, Maclean said.

“The Oyler case was no sure thing,” Maclean said. “It was not an easy process, and it was in doubt until the very end.” He said it was won by several things: the legal strategy to show his connection to as many as 80-100 fires that summer; the CAL FIRE arson unit’s meticulous evidence collecting at these many small fires; fire departments’ cooperation in preserving the point of origin at fires for investigation; and the prosecutor’s arraignment for the relevant fire investigators to be available throughout the trial — almost daily — to provide clarity and expertise.

It is clear that today an arson case can result in a murder charge and the death penalty… which will hopefully result in pause, Maclean said.

Mexico and Norman Maclean

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the departure lounge of the Puerto Escondido, Mexico airport (map) waiting for my flight to Mexico City, the first of four flight segments that would eventually get me back home to South Dakota. The Puerto Escondido airport is small, having one 7,400-foot runway with no taxiways. After landing, airplanes have to make a U-turn at the end of the runway and back-taxi to the single gate at the terminal, a small one-story building 3,200 feet from the beach with a great view of the Pacific Ocean.

I enjoyed the scenery for a while, watching the ocean, looking for whales, and people watching in the terminal which was filled mostly with Mexicans and only a few tourists. I usually like to watch airplanes take off and land, but there were none to see except for the arrival of the plane I eventually boarded.

proximity suit
Example of proximity suit

I knew a plane was about to land when I saw the small fire engine pull up near the terminal. It was a pickup with a slip-in foam unit. Standing on the back was a firefighter dressed in a shiny proximity suit, looking like he was ready to wade into flames. It was a hot day, with the temperature and the humidity both near 80.  I felt sorry for the firefighter who must have been sweating profusely in that PPE.

When the occasional announcement came over the speakers, first in Spanish and then in English, I would first attempt to decipher the Spanish version, using my meager vocabulary of Spanish words, and if that failed, as it usually did, I would try to understand the English translation. Spoken with a heavy accent, the second version was only a little easier to decipher.

We would be boarding in about an hour, but I was prepared for this moment. Nearing the end of a vacation at the beach, I brought plenty of reading material… seven books, four magazines, and several newspapers. I pulled them all out of my luggage, which consisted of one carry-on bag, and held them in my hand. I was looking at a Kindle 2 electronic reading device which can store 1,500 books.

I had downloaded all of that reading material wirelessly before I left. It takes about a minute to download a book–newspapers and magazines are even quicker.

I scrolled through the publications and selected the March 30, 2009 edition of The Nation magazine. I had never read The Nation, and figured that trying out a single copy of it for $0.49 on the Kindle 2 was low risk. If I hated it, no great loss.

Not knowing what to expect, I was surprised to find an excellent article by Philip Connors about Norman Maclean. Many wildland firefighters are familiar with Mr. Maclean (1902-1990), the author of the book Young Men and Fire, an icon among books about wildfire, published posthumously in 1992. It tells the story of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire and how 16 smoke jumpers initial attacked the fire, but only 13 went home.

Norman Maclean is the father of John N. Maclean, another well-know author who wrote Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire, The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal, and Fire and Ashes: On the Front Lines of American Wildfire.

The only book Norman Maclean wrote that was published during his lifetime was A River Runs Through It and Other Stories, published in 1976, which was adapted into the 1992 movie A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford and starring Brad Pitt.

The Connors article in The Nation mentioned another Norman Maclean book that was new to me, published in 2008, The Norman Maclean Reader, which brings together previously unpublished materials and selections from his other two books.

Two quotes in the article from the Reader got my attention, and reminded me again of the work of the word artist. He did a lot of research in the 1950s on the Battle of Little Big Horn, where General Custer met his demise.  Here is a passage about the battle, referencing warriors and smokejumpers:

“In the dry grass on both hills are white scattered markers where the bodies were found, a special cluster of them just short of the top, where red terror closed in from behind and above and from the sides. The bodies were of those who were young and thought to be invincible by others and themselves. They were the fastest the nation had in getting to where there was danger, they got there by moving in the magic realm between heaven and earth, and when they got there they almost made a game of it. None were surer they couldn’t lose than the Seventh Cavalry and the Smokejumpers.”

And this one in the Reader is originally from Young Men and Fire and is from the part of the book after the burn over, when help has arrived.

“Nearly a half a mile away the [rescue] crew could hear Hellman shouting for water. In the valley of ashes there was another sound—the occasional explosion of a dead tree that would blow to pieces when its resin became so hot it passed the point of ignition. There was little left alive to be frightened by the explosions. The rattlesnakes were dead or swimming the Missouri. The deer were also dead or swimming or euphoric. Mice and moles came out of their holes and, forgetting where their holes were, ran into the fire. Following the explosion that sent the moles and ashes running, a tree burst into flames that almost immediately died. Then the ashes settled down again to rest until they rose in clouds when the crew passed by.”

I have never seen trees explode in a fire, but moving past that, Norman Maclean can paint a picture that can bring you to the scene.

The Norman Maclean passages are reprinted here with the permission of the University of Chicago Press.

John N. Maclean on the Thirtymile Fire sentencing

As many wildland firefighters know, John N. Maclean is the author of three books about wildland fire.

  • Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire
  • Fire and Ashes: On the Front Lines of American Wildfire
  • The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal

He is a very well-respected author who is known for his thorough research, uncovering facts and assembling them into prose in such a way that makes his books required reading for firefighters.

Having known John for a while, we contacted him after Ellreese Daniels was sentenced for Daniels’ actions on the Thirtymile fire. We asked him for his reaction to the sentence and discovered that he was writing an article on the subject for Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. We received permission from John and High Country News to publish the article. Wildfire Today thanks them both for their generosity. The article is included in its entirety here.

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Mistakes on the fire lines can now lead to prosecution
By John N. Maclean
 
Behind daily headlines about bigger and more costly wildland fires, the firefighting community has been sweating out the issue of criminal liability for mistakes made on the fire line.
 
It’s not just a firefighter issue: The public has a stake in how well firefighters protect lives, property and forest values. Firefighters who know they could be sent to jail for what’s later determined to be a mistake may be less aggressive in attacking a fire, and that could prove more dangerous than hitting the fire hard from the outset.      
                  
The immediate trigger for concern has been the prosecution of Ellreese Daniels, a Forest Service incident commander. He worked the Thirtymile Fire that took the lives of four young firefighters in a narrow canyon in north-central Washington on July 10, 2001, seven long years ago.
 
Daniels was one of 11 fire managers the Forest Service set out to discipline for a series of blunders that led to the deaths. Daniels and two others were to be fired, but virtually none of the disciplinary actions held up on appeal, and no one was fired. Daniels, who had been given another fire assignment until survivors of the Thirtymile blaze complained, was relegated to a warehouse job.
 
Five years after the fire, Daniels was the only fire supervisor indicted–in federal District court in Spokane on 11 felony charges, including four counts of involuntary manslaughter. It was the first-ever criminal prosecution of an incident commander for negligence on the fire line, absent malice.
 
Daniels, who worked for the Forest Service for 24 years before the fire, was one of the few agency blacks willing to put up with the isolation of small-town life in the rural Northwest. The truth is that Daniels was pushed into a fire supervisory role, and he was not equipped to handle a big fire that put many lives at risk. U.S. Attorney James McDevitt, though, denied any racial motivation to the prosecution; he said he did not even know Daniels was black until after he had indicted him. 
Every responsible firefighter believes in accountability on the fire line; that is how safety lessons are learned. But should anyone be indicted when wildfire becomes unexpectedly violent? Every experienced firefighter knows that fire is volatile and dangerous, sometimes fatally so. Being jailed for having a bad day at work is an intimidating prospect.
 
The immediate result? Fewer firefighters are willing to become incident commanders. The International Association of Wildland Fire tested reactions in a survey of about 3,000 members, nearly all seasoned firefighters, and found that more than a third, or 36 percent, had decided to become “less available for fire assignments.” Another 23 percent said they would refuse the job of incident commander.
 
U.S. Attorney McDevitt, himself a one-time firefighter, defended the prosecution on grounds that Daniels’s negligence amounted to reckless disregard for life. Daniels recommitted his crew to the fire in late afternoon as it blew up, and after they’d backed off to a place of safety because of dangerous conditions. Then, after he and 13 others plus two civilians were cut off by spreading flames, he failed to take adequate steps to prepare for the fire’s inevitable passage. McDevitt also charged that Daniels lied to investigators afterward to shift the blame onto the fallen firefighters. 
 
“Something had to be done,” the prosecutor said.
 
Last April, under threat of a chancy six-week trial, the 11 felony charges were dropped. Instead, Daniels agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges: that he had lied about ordering the doomed firefighters to move to a safer place, and about his assertion that they had disregarded the order.
 
On Aug. 20, Judge Fred Van Sickle sentenced Daniels to three years of probation and 90 days of work release. The judge also ordered him to submit to counseling for alcohol and substance abuse, and never to fight fire again.
 
Daniels’s negligence was so extreme, McDevitt said afterward, that it makes a similar prosecution “highly unlikely.” However, Daniels’s public defender, Tina Hunt, correctly noted that the case sets a precedent: No one can predict what another U.S. attorney might do.
 
The Daniels prosecution ended without clear victory or defeat for either side. Its effects, though, are bound to linger in the minds of firefighters, the women and men who must make instant decisions under extreme conditions that affect the lives of everyone in fire country. 
-o-
    
John N. Maclean is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News. He is the author of “The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal,” and divides his time between the West and Washington, DC.

John Maclean's forward for Stephen Pyne's book

John Maclean has written three books about wildland fire: “Fire on the Mountain”, “Fire and Ashes”, and “The Thirtymile Fire”. Recently he wrote a foreword to Stephen J. Pyne’s “Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910”, first published in 2001, which is being reissued in 2008 by Mountain Press in Missoula.

We have permission from John and Mountain Press to reprint the foreword here. In the excerpt below, John writes about the fires of 1910 and the cabin at Seely Lake, Montana that has been in his family for generations. The entire foreword is worth a read.

“This summer a palpable cloak of heat and expectation hung over the landscape as though the predictable and cherished past had been replaced by an unfamiliar monster. Make no mistake, northwestern Montana is fire country and has been for centuries. The marks of fire, discovered in tree rings when one of the giant larch trees finally thunders to the ground, show that for centuries fire occurred along the shores of Seeley Lake every quarter century or so – until our forebears stopped the cycle in the wake of the Great Fires of 1910, the subject of Stephen Pyne’s Year of the Fires. When I was growing up, the Forest Service, the agency responsible for the federal land around the cabin, did not allow us to cut a tree and even discouraged clearing brush. The offset was the promise that the Forest Service would contain any fire that threatened the area under the full suppression policy that was adopted in response to the 1910 calamity.

That full suppression policy now has been formally abandoned – along with the rule forbidding the cutting of trees around Seeley Lake. In recent years, the Forest Service itself undertook a forest thinning and light burning project in the area. The treated zones provoked complaints in the first year or two because they looked rough, but they have become a glorious sight since then. Densely packed stands of “dog hair” lodgepole pine have been opened up, disclosing centuries-old trees. The big trees, whose growth was stunted in recent decades because they were deprived of moisture and light, now can take their place as giants and future giants. Fuzzy new trees and low brush carpet the forest floor. Wildlife can move freely. Humans can hike or snowmobile through the stands without battling brush. The forest is not fire proof, but a low-intensity fire would likely burn through here without catastrophic damage. Regular clearing by fire is what allowed the giants to grow big in the first place.

During the summer, I mowed down the tall grass near the cabin, felled a couple of dead lodgepole pines, and cleared a year’s accumulation of duff from near the cabin. Then I left the place to its rendezvous with fire – which was not long in coming.”

Maclean’s and Pyne’s books can be found at the International Association of Wildland Fire Books page.

Well Written Reviews of Two Wildland Fire Books

Towards the end of last year two books about wildland fire were published. The Thirtymile Fire,” by John N. Maclean, and “A Great Day to Fight Fire” by Mark Matthews. The topic of Maclean’s book is obvious. Matthews writes about the 1949 Mann Gulch fire, which Maclean’s father also covered in his book, “Young Men and Fire” which was finished in 1992 by others after his death.

A writer for the High Country News, Ray Ring, reviewed both new books, showing more understanding of fire than most reviewers. Here’s a sample where Ring writes about “A Great Day to Fight Fire“. (The entire review can be found on the Vail Trail site.)

“Matthews’ book on the gulch fire is the literary landmark there now. It’s also a kind of policy landmark. Matthews spends a few words on how the Mann Gulch deaths led to improvements in firefighting, but his underlying message is that, no matter what tactics we try, no matter what technologies we develop, wildfires will always be wild, chaotic and lethal. As global warming promotes more intense blazes, we can only reduce the risk of casualties by backing away from the flames. Let more fires burn on their own terms; that’s part of Matthews’ acceptance. And the next time prosecutors and next-of kin rush to assign blame for casualties, maybe we should hold off. The deaths and injuries radiating outward are already punishment enough. In the desperate moments when the flames come too close, we’re all perfect in our imperfections.”