Recommended Reading for Wildland Firefighters
These are some great books and other resources to read in order to understand the history of wildfire and wildland firefighting in America as well as more recent events and wildfire science.
The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America
by Timothy Egan
This is a very well-written history of the Forest Service, the conservation movement in the early 1900s in America, Teddy Roosevelt setting aside public lands, and the devastating 1910 fires in Oregon, Idaho and Washington, among other topics. it really gives a great overview of how wildland fire shaped American landscapes and politics. I also really enjoyed learning about how they fought such devastating fires back in the day.
Megafire: The Race to Extiniguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame
by Michael Kodas
Wildfires are getting hotter, more destructive, and more expensive to fight every year. This is an engaging account of modern wildfires and what has lead us to this point. It’s a great one to read after The Big Burn because it gives you the historical knowledge to understand why certain wildfire policies have a part in creating megafires. It also dives into basic wildfire operations and what goes into fighting fire.
Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World
by John Vaillant
Another great book examining how wildfires are becoming hotter, faster and more destructive. The chapters about fire tornados and how Canadian wildland firefighters were trying to stop blazes by creating firebreaks through subdivisions by demolishing entire neighborhoods alone are worth the read.
Incredible photographs accompany this memoir from a photographer who’s been in the mix documenting devastating wildfires for more than a decade. Really powerful perspective from someone who’s been on the frontlines in some of the most horrific fire conditions.
Stuart has an incredible Instagram account documenting his photography. Really enjoy his captions explaining what he’s seeing and what’s behind the shots.
Young Men and Fire
by Norman Maclean
The Mann Gulch Fire in in Montana in 1949 killed 13 smokejumpers. This was the first tragedy fire to kill so many trained firefighters since the inception of paid wildland firefighters. This fire also changed firefighter training and safety while suppressing wildfires and placed a greater emphasis on fire science. The 10s and 18s that every wildland firefighter knows came from lessons learned at this fire.
Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire
by John N. Maclean
This book describes the decisions and chain of events that spiraled out of control and resulted in 14 wildland firefighters dying in a blow up during the 1994 South Canyon Fire in Colorado. This tragedy fire also resulted in new policies, such as the Downhill Fireline Construction Checklist, and training to prevent similar events from happening.
The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal
by John N. Maclean
Four wildland firefighters died in the Thirty Mile Fire in Washington in 2001. This book gives great details about how a basic mop-up fire got so out of control and lead to the crew’s entrapment. A lot of unlikely factors combined to create this entrapment and the analysis made me think a lot about what I would do as a leader in similar circumstances.
The Esperanza Fire: Arson, Murder, and the Agony of Engine 57
by John N. Maclean
An entire engine crew died in the Esperanza Fire, which was started by an arsonist in California in 2006. The engine crew was protecting structures when fire behavior picked up rapidly and overtook them. This book definitely made me think a lot about what I do when I’m doing structure protection and what my escapes routes and safety zones are. It was also really interesting to read about the arsonist’s trial. He was charged with murder for starting the blaze that killed the five wildland firefighters.
On the Burning Edge: A Fateful Fire and the Men Who Fought It
by Kyle Dickman
Dickman was a wildland firefighter before he became a writer so he brings personal experience and perspectives to the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona, which killed 19 of the 20 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots. He really gets into the crew member’s lives and who they were and who they left behind. It’s still a mystery why exactly the crew was where they were, but this book helps describe their motivations and how capable the crew was and how quickly the fire conditions changed.
This is also about the Yarnell Hill Fire and the Granite Mountain Hotshots. It is balanced and well researched, but because Santos was never a wildland firefighter some basic wildfire operations aren’t described as well as they are in Dickman’s book. As an outsider looking into wildland fire culture, she does a good job of not seeking blame. There was one passage describing charred and melted personal affects found with the firefighters that still haunts me.
I’ve never been a smokejumper, but work with them on my current forest, so this was really interesting to read about their historical role in fighting fire and what they have to go through physically. He has some great fire stories.
Fireseason: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout
by Philip Connors
Similar to the smokejumper memoir, I’ve never been a fire lookout, so I enjoyed reading about this side of wildland firefighting. Fire lookouts used to be extremely prevalent, but now there are less than a thousand staffed lookouts. Decades ago there were probably ten times that many. One forest I worked on had a staffed lookout tower with a man who had worked there about 40 years. I loved hearing his stories and seeing pictures of fires he had taken from up there. This is a great book about this often under appreciated part of fire.
The Smokey Generation is a project that is rooted in understanding and celebrating that vernacular (and the wildland fire community that surrounds it) through the collection, preservation, and sharing of stories about wildland fire by wildland firefighters themselves.
It’s a project that values the history of fire and, at its core, is designed to get us talking about the importance of fire in the environment.
You can sort by collection, topic, person, or explore an interactive map.
Incredible undertaking between the Interagency Hotshot Crew community and the Wildland Firefighter Foundation (WFF) to educate people on historic and notable fires.
This project, and a few old hotshot superintendents behind it, intend to build a timeline of the 100 fires that every wildland firefighter should know about.
These fires tell the history of wildfire in this country; these fires shaped the evolution of the wildland fire service; and finally these fires claimed many lives... we want to honor those lives and carry those hard earned lessons forward.
With any such "timeline" there will need to be a set of criteria to decide which events to include. We realize that any timeline has a subjective element to it and not everyone will agree with every event included or excluded. This is not a timeline of the "biggest fires" or even the "most important" fires. It is, however, a timeline of fires that meet one or more of these criteria: was historically significant; made a notable impact across the wildland fire service; caused three or more wildland firefighter fatalities by entrapment; caused a civilian mass casualty event; or caused a hotshot crew member line of duty death.
You can find hotshot line of duty fatality summaries HERE.
This list is not exhaustive, it’s just what I have personally read and found value in. Some are kind of rough to read, but tragedy fires should be something every wildland firefighter honors and learns from.
Let me know your recommendations. I’m always looking for more books to read.
Continue Reading