“A campaign fire is just like war. And war — as we all know — is grim.”
(A line from “Man Against Fire”)
The National Interagency Fire Center has been as busy uploading films to YouTube today as a squirrel putting away nuts for the winter. On Tuesday they added over two dozen videos to their “NIFC channel” on the site. We embedded a couple of them on FireAviation.com (about working with helicopters and Air Attack), and another one on Wildfire Today, a video case study of the Deer Park Fire, a serious injury complicated by a helicopter incident.
But one of the films uploaded today is an oldie — 43 years old, in fact. It is Man Against Fire, produced by the U.S. Forest Service in 1969. The best things about it (aside from the quote above) are the narrator, with a deep, gravelly voice, and the “Fire Boss”, the terminology that preceded the currently used term, “Incident Commander”. Several times during the film the Fire Boss is seen smoking a cigar.
It’s hard to say what the objective of making the film was in 1969. It’s not exactly a training film, although it could have given a newly hired firefighter a little glimpse into what they might see on a large “campaign fire”. It may also have been shown to the general public for approximately the same reason, so that they could better appreciate what wildland firefighters do.
If you don’t speak Large Fire Organization terminology, here are some terms used in the film converted to the Incident Command System:
- Fire Boss = Incident Commander
- Line Boss = Operations Section Chief
- Division = A geographical unit on the fire comprised of multiple Sectors
But enough about that. Roll the film:
Man Against Fire was used as part of an exercise in the 2009 Fireline Safety Refresher Training.
If you like the historic wildland fire films, check out WildfireTube.com, where this video has been available since 2010, along with many others.
Nice cameo appearance by the 6th Army out of Ft. Lewis, WA. I’m sure fighting fires was more preferable to the alternative in 1969.