Some editorial thoughts from Tom Harbour
I have wondered what to offer in the wake of the Granite Mountain disaster. The tragedy plays over and over in our minds. We remember where we were. We remember what we heard. We remember how our hearts sank, the words we uttered, the prayer we offered. Just 19 years and one week apart from the similar experience of “it can never happen again” Storm King, the Granite Mountain hotshots are forever etched in the wildland fire psyche.
Now the Granite Mountain memorial and funerals are complete. With much of the western fire season yet to unfold, we have seen, heard, and read thoughtful commentary about the work we do and the places we do it. In addition to Granite Mountain, six other souls have perished this year. The toll in our fire business is far, far too high. Yet, as I experience my fourty fourth year in this profession, I’m struck by the dark “book ends” of two mass casualty events of our work, Storm King and Yarnell Hill.
While the huge hole and pain of the 06 July 1994 Storm King lingered in our hearts, with pain and memories brought to the surface by intervening losses since then, the scope of the 30 June 2013 tragedy was more expansive, more focused on our hotshots, with more lives lost, and more hurt in one moment than ever before. Nothing of this scale has ever happened to us. We grieve. We will work through grieving. Our commitment to our Granite Mountain brothers, the promises we make as brothers and sisters to our fellow professionals, is that we must find a better way forward. Speaking forcefully to us, with words we have yet to understand completely, fallen smokejumpers and hotshots, accompanied by a chorus of aviators and firefighters, the best of the best, tell us we must do better.
Finding a way forward, a different paradigm of doing better, from the Yarnell Hill Fire event is unchartered territory for us and that “better” isn’t just us. The discussion and dialogue in our community and in our nation, amongst all of us, needs to be as focused as the individual, and as large as a national public policy debate. We have pledged to “never forget”; so must we also pledge to “always remember”. With 19 souls gone in one event, we must honestly ask ourselves questions we have never probed so deeply before to answer. We must ask if our knowledge, our skill, our ability as fire and aviation professionals has in some way masked the dangers we, individually and collectively as a nation, face from fire. In addition, there are other "big" questions to ask, answers to form, and actions to take.
At the scale of each individual professional, we must better define and express doctrine, management of risk, and exposure to the dangers of our work. Individual dedication to reflect and act is excellent, but we must have more vigorous collective discussion, reflection, and action as we deal with fire, light fire, or fight fire. There is a “better” we must do.
At the scale of the nation, we must engage in a difficult and complex discussion about the choices we have made as a society and the table we set for those of us, citizens ourselves, who willingly insert ourselves between the flame and lives, homes, and communities. Our voices need to be heard, to one another, and to our local, state, and national leaders. Nineteen years and a week passed between the tragedy on Storm King Mountain and the tragedy north of Yarnell. In the interval, nearly 400 wildland firefighters have died. The terrible sacrifice tell us we must chart a new and better course forward, one which always remembers.
Tom Harbour
Director, Fire and Aviation Management
HQ, US Forest Service, Washington DC
Office 202 205 1483