Forest Service Learned A Lot -- 50 Years Ago, 13 Died Fighting Mann Gulch Fire

CONFUSION and lack of communication during the fighting of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire in Montana prompted significant changes in smoke-jumper training, and the establishment of fire-science laboratories.

HELENA, Mont. - Late on the bone-dry August afternoon, the air shimmering with 97-degree heat, 15 smoke jumpers parachuted into a remote gulch to fight a fire sparked by lightning.

Within 90 minutes, 10 were dead, overtaken by a searing wall of flame 200 feet high. A forest ranger on the ground died with them. Two others succumbed to burns the next day.

Today, the U.S. Forest Service marks the 50th anniversary of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire - the first major catastrophe to befall the agency's then-fledgling smoke-jumper program.

The number of firefighter deaths in a single blaze, 13, was unsurpassed until July 6, 1994, when an inferno on Storm King mountain outside Glenwood Springs, Colo., killed 14 firefighters, three of them smoke jumpers.

The Mann Gulch tragedy inspired a 1952 Hollywood movie, "Red Skies of Montana," and was the subject of the haunting, 1992 nonfiction bestseller "Young Men and Fire" by Norman Maclean, who also wrote "A River Runs Through It."

Earlier this year, Mann Gulch joined the National Register of Historic Sites. Granite markers on the hillside commemorate the men who died. Like the 10 men and four women killed on Storm King, the Mann Gulch firefighters died when a fire blew up and trapped them on a steep slope.

"The Mann Gulch fire was very significant for us. It was really the start of the Forest Service's commitment to understanding fire behavior, and the commitment to firefighters' safety," says Jerry Williams, fire coordinator at the regional Forest Service headquarters in Missoula.

"That's where we started developing protective equipment for people, better tools . . . also kind of a national mobilization toward establishing fire-line safe practices," Williams says.

On Aug. 5, 1949, the Forest Service crew completed their jump into Mann Gulch between 3:50 and 4:10 p.m. and were joined on the ground by forest ranger Jim Harrison, who had been alone on the scene for hours digging fire lines.

The single radio that was dropped from the airplane with them smashed on impact, cutting off the crew from outside communication.

The men were heading down the gulch toward the Missouri River when flames flared up below them and jumped across the ravine.

The men quickly realized their predicament. Flames were racing up the steep slope toward them. The only escape was over the ridge. They dropped their gear and ran.

The fire overtook them one by one. Eleven died in the gulch, where temperatures probably reached 1,800 degrees, according to estimates possible today. Two more died in a Helena hospital.

Only three smoke jumpers survived - foreman R. Wagner "Wag" Dodge, at 33 the oldest member of the group, who lit a back fire and lay down in the burned-out area as the main fire skipped over or around him, and two teenagers, Robert Sallee and Walter Rumsey, who found refuge in the rim rocks high above the slope.

Eventually, it took 450 firefighters to control the blaze, which grew from 60 acres to 3,000.

The confusion and lack of communication at Mann Gulch prompted significant changes in smoke-jumper training, says Laird Robinson, a former smoke jumper and veteran Forest Service official in Missoula, who helped Maclean with research for "Young Men and Fire."

Wag Dodge, for instance, while an experienced smoke jumper and foreman, was a stranger to most of his crew that day, Robinson says. Now, smoke jumpers undergo a paramilitary regimen in which veterans help train the crews they will lead into fires.

Mann Gulch and other killer wildfires also prompted establishment of fire-science laboratories, at Missoula and at Macon, Ga., where the Forest Service studies how fires behave, how weather affects them and how best to fight them.

Development labs in Missoula and San Dimas, Calif., invented or improved much of the equipment today's firefighters use in the wild.

"In 1949 they wore jeans and a cotton, long-sleeved work shirt. They wore baseball hats," Robinson says.

Today, smoke jumpers wear hard hats and fire-resistant clothing. Several members in a crew carry compact, multichannel radios that keep them in contact with dispatchers, aircraft and other crews.

And every smoke jumper carries a fire shelter, Robinson says, "basically a tiny aluminum tent that one individual can crawl inside of, that's heat reflective."

The center of attention at today's commemoration in Helena is likely to be Bob Sallee, the last living survivor of the Mann Gulch fire. Sallee, 67, an engineer and paper-manufacturing executive from Spokane, does not relish the limelight.

"I'm participating in it because I don't really have any choice," Sallee says. "I'm the only survivor. I have a lot of smoke-jumper friends who are telling me that, like it or not, I'm part of history and I have to go up there and do this."

Also attending will be Jack Harrison, who 50 years ago was summoned to identify the body of his brother, the ranger who died in the fire.

"My brother had been a smoke jumper the year before, and my mother didn't want him to jump anymore because it was too dangerous," Harrison says. So Jim Harrison took a job as recreation ranger at a nearby Forest Service picnic area - and died at Mann Gulch.

"My mother never did really get over it," Jack Harrison says.

"I think the Forest Service has done a good job," he adds. "I think if my brother were here today, he'd be proud of what they're doing. . . . I was thinking, `Boy, if Jimmy was down here he'd be grinning from ear to ear.' "