The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America

About 1,000 people stand in Avery, directly in the path of the fire, seeking direction from the Forest Service and the Army. Most rangers are “up in the mountains with their dying crews” (201). Ranger Ralph Debitt had returned to Avery for supplies, a decision which saved his life. His crew burns to death while he is away. Debitt is no leader. He is paralyzed by doubt, so the soldiers take charge. Debitt leaves town to scout the fire and the soldiers put Avery under martial law. On Sunday morning, Debitt messages the soldiers to begin evacuating women and children and to warn the rest to be ready to leave quickly. Less than an hour later, the soldiers have evacuation trains loaded and ready to depart. Egan notes that the Avery evacuation proceeds more smoothly than the one in Wallace. After the train doors are closed, the windows shut, and the engine is engaged, Ione Adair emerges from the forest. She approaches the train, but is told it has no room. She hops on top of the caboose, finds a foothold, and obtains her passage to safety on the outside of a train about to plunge into the heat and flames of the blaze.

Debitt returns to town after the train leaves. Only he, some men, and a group of soldiers remain. The town looks as if it is doomed, so he orders an evacuation on the only train remaining. The tracks lead into the heart of the fire. They unsuccessfully attempt to push through the flames before retreating back to Avery. Saving the town is now their only hope for survival. They start a backfire by the riverbank so it has no direction to burn except uphill, away from the men and towards the oncoming blaze. Egan describes:

Both fires seemed to unite as they struck the back fire. About the same time the wind suddenly died out, and if it had not died out about that time, and if there had been no back fire, nothing could have saved the town or people. The flames sank rapidly and in about an hour it was evident that the danger was over and all that remained to do was to watch the fires which were burning out (209).

They save Avery.

On Sunday morning the fire is blazing and communication is down throughout most of the forest. Weigle assembles a search party for Pulaski and his men. Stragglers arrive from the forests and inform Weigle that Pulaski is alive, but is in terrible shape and might not survive the trek down the mountain. The path down contains heaps of hot ash and coal, and Pulaski is traversing the harsh terrain nearly blind. Egan notes of the entire group, “What had been described a few days earlier as an army of firefighters marching briskly off to war was now a pathetic ragtag collection of humans thrown against the mountains—men broken, lost, wailing” (212).

Around five o’clock Emma Pulaski and her daughter rise from the mine tunnel where they sheltered and return to Wallace. Their house stands. She receives periodic news of her husband: first that he is dead, then that he is alive but horribly disfigured and likely will not live long, then later she finds him on the road to their house being ushered to safety.

Hundreds are missing and an equal number likely dead. Without accurate information, newspapers speculate: “300 Fire Fighters Dead […] St. Joe Fire Hems in 180 Men Who May Never Escape […] Head Ranger Debitt Concedes the Death of Ranger Halm and his Party of 70” (213-17). The lost are “only a day or two’s hike from towns and roads, but in their isolation they could have been in the far, roadless Alaska wilderness” (214). Weigle redirects his search efforts to Ranger Joe Halm and his crew, who are deeper in the woods than anyone else. They search for days, but find nothing. The fire, meanwhile, travels north and east, to British Columbia, the edge of the Rockies, and the plains, leaving behind “logs piled on other logs; millions of trees fire-stripped of bark and branches, stacked and tossed in the gullies and valleys; and hot spots, hundreds of them, burning coals and hard timber” (216). One newspaper states there are “no forests left to burn” (216).

Several days later, a search party finds Halm and his crew. Halm recounts their harrowing ordeal. They had extinguished their fire and were ready to return when an immense blaze appeared on top of them. A group of men fled, and Halm retreated to a creek with the rest. They waited in the creek, then were forced to flee falling trees. They created a buffer on the sandbar by pouring buckets of water. The fire passed the sandbar at night and temperatures plummeted. Egan describes, “Men shivered in their wet clothes, shaking as they nursed burned skin and coughed on smoke from the backed-up and slow-burning timber just upstream from them” (220), but Halm had all his men. They retreated to a cave in an area already burned, then set out again the next day. They spent days searching for their missing men, checking on locals, and hunting for food. Dead fish polluted the water, making it unfit to drink, and they became dehydrated. When they are found, Halm’s men return to Avery while Halm himself stays behind to search for a missing prospector. 

The fire retreats and rain finally comes. Rangers search for bodies and bury those they find. The estimated death count is between 100 and 200 people. The space of an entire eastern state “had burned, border to border, every acre” (230). Greeley estimates a billion dollars of timber burned. He is distressed. With just a little more funding for more men or to build a few trails, he believes they could have contained the blaze and limited the damage.

After a bath, a meal, and some sleep, Halm is ready to return to work; after saving lives in the blaze, Pulaski and other rangers pay the medical expenses of brave individuals who fought the fire with them when the government refuses; the Buffalo Soldiers saved countless lives with their heroic actions during evacuation and fighting the fires. Weigle orders Halm to document the destruction with a glass plate camera, because “[p]eople would not believe this—not in Washington, not the president or the Congress, not the newspapers—without pictures” (231).

Many survivors do not recover as well as Halm. Pulaski’s sight is permanently damaged, many perish or are crippled from their injuries, and others suffer psychologically from the events. The federal government refuses to pay many medical expenses of those injured fighting the fires, and even shorts wages owed. The parents of Bruno, one of the Italians who died fighting the fire after working more than a week straight of 17 hour days, receive $200 for his service after fighting the government for two years to receive compensation with the assistance of a team of ambassadors and diplomats. Egan notes, “Families of the Americans who died were not treated much better” (236).