1910 — Aug 20-Sep 9, Wildfires, ID (84 deaths), MT (7 killed), WA (3 deaths) — 94
— 94 Bilbrey, Wade. The Great Fire of 1910 (Website). “Fatalities.” Accessed 11-25-2016.
— 87 Egan. “Ideas & Trends; Why Foresters Prefer to Fight Fire With Fire,” NYT, 8-20-2000.
— 86 National Fire Protection Association (firefighters).
— 86 National Fire Protection Assoc. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003).
— 86 Petersen, Jim. “The West is Burning Up! The 1910 Fire.” Evergreen Magazine, 1994-95.
— 85 Ludlum, David M. The American Weather Book, 1982, p. 175.
— 85 National Interagency Fire Center 2007; NWS, Portland OR WFO, WA Top 10.
— 85 Smalley, James. Protecting Life and Property from Wildfire, 2005, p. 24.
Idaho (84)
— 84 Bilbrey, Wade. The Great Fire of 1910 (Website). “Fatalities.” Accessed 11-25-2016.[1]
— 1 Adair
— 1 Avery vicinity
–32 Big Creek
— 8 Bullion Mine
— 2 DeFaut Gulch
— 1 Mullan Road
— 1 Newport vicinity (Newport is on the Washington side of the WA and Idaho border.)
— 1 Sandpoint
— 1 St. Joe City
–28 Storm Creek
— 1 Upper St. Joe
— 5 W. F. Placer Creek
— 2 Wallace
— 82 Ludlum. The American Weather Book, 1982, p. 175.
Montana ( 7)
— 7 Bilbrey, Wade. The Great Fire of 1910 (Website). “Fatalities.” Accessed 11-25-2016.[2]
–1 Copper Creek
–1 Iron Mountain
–1 Saltese
–4 Swamp Creek
Washington ( 3)
— 3 Bilbrey, Wade. The Great Fire of 1910 (Website). “Fatalities.” Accessed 11-25-2016.[3]
–2 Newport vicinity
–1 Spokane
Narrative Information (Sources Listed Alphabetically)
Egan: “Ninety years ago today, in the choking heat of a summer without rain in the northern Rockies, the sun disappeared from the sky and a sound not unlike cannon fire began rattling throughout Montana and Idaho. The Big Burn, as the three-million-acre firestorm of 1910 was called, eventually consumed entire towns, killed 87 people and burned a lesson into the fledgling United States Forest Service….” (Egan. “Ideas & Trends; Why Foresters Prefer to Fight Fire With Fire,” NYT, 8-20-2000.)
Ludlum: “Big Blowup of Idaho fires during driest month in history; 1736 fires, three million acres burned; 78 fire fighters and 7 others died; town of Wallace half consumed.” (Ludlum. The American Weather Book, 1982, p. 175.
NWS: “August 20-September 9, 1910 – Massive Forest Fires in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho
- Three million acres of timber were scorched
- Conflagration created its own weather. Ships in the Pacific Ocean were lost in the smoke, which also reached the Atlantic seaboard
- The flames claimed 85 lives – 72 of them firefighters.”
(National Weather Service, Portland Oregon Weather Forecast Office, WA Top 10.)
Petersen: “Depending on who was doing the counting, there were either 1,736 fires burning in northern Idaho and western Montana on August 19, or there were 3,000. It did not much matter which number you picked because on August 20 it seemed like there was only one fire burning, and it was the sum total of all the others that had been burning the day before….
“…on Saturday afternoon, August 20, all hell broke lose. Hurricane-force winds, unlike anything seen since, roared across the rolling Palouse country of eastern Washington and on into Idaho and Montana forests so dry they crackled underfoot. In a matter of hours, fires became firestorms, and trees by the millions became exploding candles. Millions more, sucked from the ground, roots and all, became flying blowtorches. It was dark by four in the afternoon, save for wind-powered fireballs that rolled from ridgetop to ridgetop at seventy miles an hour. They leaped canyons a half-mile wide in one fluid motion. Entire mountainsides ignited in an instant. It was like nothing anyone had ever seen before….
“It was the largest forest fire in American history. Maybe even the largest forest fire ever. No one knows for sure, but even now, it is hard to put into words what it did. For two terrifying days and night’s…the fire raged across three million acres of virgin timberland in northern Idaho and western Montana. Many thought the world would end, and for 86, it did.
“Most of what was destroyed fell to hurricane-force winds that turned the fire into a blowtorch. Re-constructing what happened leads to an almost impossible conclusion: Most of the cremation occurred in a six-hour period. A forester named Edward Stahl wrote of flames shooting hundreds of feet in the air, “fanned by a tornadic wind so violent that the flames flattened out ahead, swooping to earth in great darting curves, truly a veritable red demon from hell.”
”Among the 86 who perished were 28 or 29 men – no one knows for sure – who tried to outrun their fate in a straight upstraight down canyon called Storm Creek. Two men too terrified to face death took their own lives. One jumped from a burning train and the other shot himself when he feared an approaching fire would overtake him. Two fire fighters fled into flames before the very eyes of horrified comrades huddled in a nearby stream….
“The fire turned trees and men into weird torches that exploded like Roman candles,” one survivor told a newspaper reporter….
“For the want of a nail, the shoe was cast, the rider thrown, the battle lost,” [Gifford Pinchot, Director, Bureau of Forestry] told a reporter from Everybody’s Magazine. “For want of trails the finest white pine forests in the United States were laid waste and scores of lives lost.
“…looking back now, it is clear no single event did more to mold the U.S. Forest Service in its historic image than did the 1910 fire.” (Petersen, The 1910 Fire, 1994-1995)
Smalley: “The Great Idaho Fire, which occurred between August 10 and 21, 1910, was a disastrous blow to the Forest Service. Thus unprecedented wildfire resulted from many uncontrolled fires started by lightning, logging, land clearing, railroads, and so on. An estimated 1736 fires were burning at the time in just the National Forests of the area. An extremely dry hot and windy spring and summer preceded the period of hurricane force winds that hit the area on August 20 and 21, when many fires blew up and burned together in an unprecedented mass ignition. The fire burned mostly uncut western white pine in portions of northern Idaho, western Montana, and eastern Washington. This fire set the stage for a whole cycle of subsequent wildfires in 1919, 1926, 1929, and on up through the 1960s.
“The Great Idaho Fire burned close to 3 million acres and killed 85 people, many of them fire fighters. A number of lightning fires preceded a hurricane force windstorm, creating a gigantic crown fire. This fire burned 3 million acres of timber over the course of the evening of August 20, 1910 (note that crown fires burn in the flammable tops of trees and tall shrubs, also called canopies). Once a wildfire climbs up into the canopy of the forest trees and becomes a crown fire, it spreads rapidly and reaches extreme intensity…This fire also served as the basis for the Forest Service’s policy that all fire was bad and had to be suppressed as quickly as possible.” (Smalley. Protecting Life and Property from Wildfire, 2005, p. 24.)
Sources
Bilbrey, Wade. The Great 1910 Fire of Idaho, Montana, and Washington (Website). “Fatalities.” Accessed 11-25-2016. Accessed 11-25-2016 at: http://www.1910fire.com/
Egan, Timothy. “Ideas & Trends; Why Foresters Prefer to Fight Fire With Fire,” New York Times, 8-20-2000. Accessed 11-25-2016 at: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/08/20/weekinreview/ideas-trends-why-foresters-prefer-to-fight-fire-with-fire.html
Ludlum, David M. The American Weather Book. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1982.
National Interagency Fire Center. Fire Information – Wildland Fire Statistics. Boise, ID, NIFC, 2007. Accessed at: http://www.nifc.gov/fire_info/historical_stats.htm
National Fire Protection Association. Spreadsheet of 10+ Fatality Fires, as of 3-15-2013. Email attachment to Wayne Blanchard.
National Weather Service Forecast Office, Portland, OR. Washington’s Top 10 Weather Events of 1900’s. NWS, NOAA. Accessed 12-22-2008 at: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/paststorms/washington10.php
Petersen, Jim. “The West is Burning Up! The 1910 Fire.” Evergreen Magazine, Winter Edition 1994-1995. Accessed 11-25-2016 at: http://www.idahoforests.org/fires.htm
Smalley, James C. (Ed.). Protecting Life and Property from Wildfire. Quincy, MA: National Fire Protection Association, 2005. Partially digitized by Google at: http://books.google.com/books?id=2913l73SEAUC&dq=Wildfire+1910&source=gbs_navlinks_s
[1] Provides names of victims, name of the fire, place of death and interment, and background info. when available.
[2] Provides names of victims, name of the fire, place of death and interment, and background info. when available.
[3] Provides names of victims, name of the fire, place of death and interment, and background info. when available.