Return to my Book Review pages
Go to my home page
Book Review, © Copyright 2000, Jim Loy
On July 6, 1994, fourteen professional fire fighters (ten men, three of whom were Smoke Jumpers, and four women) died fighting a fire on Storm King Mountain in Colorado, a fire misnamed the South Canyon Fire. The story begins with management bungling which allowed a tiny fire to grow into a big fire, and which prevented the fire fighters from being informed of the weather forecast of dangerous winds. Winds do not just move a fire from here to there, they sometimes make a fire explode into a "blowup," a vast and deadly increase in the fire. Some of the fire fighters on Storm King Mountain walked into a dangerous situation, without taking enough precautions. The fire blew up. And fire fighters ran for their lives; most of them made it; fourteen did not.
This fire invites comparison to the Mann Gulch Fire which took the lives of twelve Smoke Jumpers. And this book invites comparison to Young Men and Fire - by Norman Maclean, the father of the author of this book. The books are different. But this book (Fire on the Mountain) in much more immediate and thrilling. I think it is a better book.
We've seen this scenario before. Little things go wrong, nothing to worry about. But, seemingly against all odds, these little things accumulate, adding up to a disaster. We see it in nuclear power accidents. We see it in climbing Mt. Everest, or trekking to the South Pole. We see it in disasters on rocket launch pads. We forget that everything can go wrong at once.
To order this book, click Amazon.com (goes directly to this book).