Dark Days in August
In the summer of 1910, great fires swept across the Northern Rocky Mountains and Western Canada, consuming nearly 4 million acres of prime timber. After an already long summer of seemingly constant wildfires, a warm Palouse wind swept out of eastern Washington on Aug. 20, crossing the Idaho panhandle and heading into Montana, whipping hundreds of separate blazes into a giant conflagration that destroyed more than 1 million acres in a harrowing 48-hour period. The blowup swallowed entire towns, cut off railroads and overran hapless firefighters throughout Idaho and Montana, killing dozens of people.
The fires scarred more than just the landscape; they dramatically affected firefighting efforts on both sides of the U.S. and Canadian border. In the north, the fires had virtually no Dominion Forestry Branch personnel to collide with, but they galvanized the need for fire prevention and suppression policies and efforts. In the United States, where the newly minted U.S. Forest Service had promised to protect the woods from all abuse, the 1910 fires killed debate over whether fires should be fought and loosened Congress' penurious funding of the agency responsible for guarding the country's forests. The fires convinced generations of Forest Service leaders to battle fires with everything they had, setting the nation's perception and approach to firefighting for the next century.
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Prior to the start of the fires, the five-year-old U.S. Forest Service, created in 1905, was stretched thin. Equipped with a badge, double-bitted axe, rifle and sidearm, Forest Service rangers had instructions to "look out for fires, timber thieves, squatters and game violators" as they patrolled millions of acres alone. When the light summer rains that normally dampened the Northern Rockies never materialized, the Forest Service found itself managing a tinderbox of dry fuels ripe to burn. At the time, the agency was struggling to prove to the public that it was better able to care for millions of acres of timberland than were private interests. The 1910 fires became its first major test.
The U.S. Forest Service appeared well-staffed in 1910 compared to Canada's Dominion Forestry Branch. Created four years earlier, the Forestry Branch sought to emulate its southern counterpart by establishing a conservation program to manage Canada's forests for wise use. Central to forest conservation was protection from fire, and Director Robert Campbell worked hard to bring some semblance of systematic fire control to the Western territories. In Western Canada, fire followed the migration of people. Coal-fired railroad engines sent off sparks into the vast forestlands and left raging conflagrations in their wake.
In the summer of 1910, a nearly continuous 75-mile stretch on the eastern slope of the Rockies burned. To combat this, the Dominion Forestry Branch had available a permanent staff of just 40 and an annual budget of $100,000, compared to the U.S. Forest Service's $4.6 million budget supporting 2,000 permanent employees. In the face of the 1910 fires, the best fire control Dominion could offer were prevention efforts and limited attacks with locally recruited crews. With limited firefighting efforts and few people in their path, the 1910 fires largely ran their course in Canada.
South of the border, fire control efforts were much different. The fires began early that summer. By July, thousands of men, untrained and hastily transported into the mountains, were fighting hundreds of fires across the Northwest under the direction of overwhelmed Forest Service rangers. The extremely rough terrain made many of the fires inaccessible. With the closest roads sometimes 60 miles from the fireline, firefighters had to cover the rest of the ground on foot over rough game trails. In August, timber companies pleaded with President William Taft to commit U.S. Army troops to the fight; Taft responded by sending nearly 4,000 troops, or 5% of the nation's total standing army.
August's low humidity and high winds exacerbated the fires. Then suddenly, on Aug. 20 and 21, a gale-force wind blew, fanning little fires into giant conflagrations travelling 30 to 50 miles in a few hours and sweeping over stranded crews and towns. According to one eyewitness in Montana, quoted by Elers Koch, "The sky turned a ghastly yellow, and at four o' clock it was black dark ahead of the advancing flames." The fire burned much of Wallace, Idaho, before crossing over the Bitterroot Range into Montana and devouring the mountain outposts of Taft, Saltese, DeBorgia and Haugan. Those unable to escape were forced to weather the blast in whatever places promised some degree of safety. Some retreated into mine tunnels, some took refuge on recently burned-over areas and others lay in small streams covering their heads with blankets. Only rain and decreasing temperatures on Aug. 23 halted the fires' advance.
Horrific scenes of burned firefighters both alive and dead were widespread throughout the region. Seventy-eight firefighters, along with seven civilians, perished in the flames. Scores of injured firefighters overwhelmed local hospitals. In addition to the loss of life and property, the fires turned millions of acres of verdant forest into a moonscape. The Forest Service estimated that the fires destroyed more than 6 billion board feet of marketable timber, enough to supply the entire nation for several months.
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