The 75th anniversary of the Mann Gulch Fire

On August 5, 1949,13 smokejumpers lost their lives responding to a fire that at first glance appeared manageable. The tragedy shook the wildland fire community and sparked a nationwide research effort aimed at better understanding wildfire behavior and improving firefighter safety. 

The Mann Gulch Fire was detected the morning of August 5th on the Helena National Forest, ignited by lightning that had moved through the area the previous afternoon. After a patrol flight to assess the fire and terrain, District Ranger Robert Jansson knew there were significant challenges in trying to reach the fire with ground crews. He quickly requested 15 smokejumpers from the Missoula Jump Base to help with initial attack. The crew parachuted into the 60-acre fire around 3:10 p.m., joining a lone fire guard who had hiked up from a nearby guard station. At that time, the fire seemed manageable despite record-breaking heat. Shortly thereafter the winds picked up, fire activity increased, and the fire spotted across the canyon below the crew. At 5:56 p.m. the firefighters were overrun by the advancing fire, and 13 lives were lost.

This tragic event weighed heavily on fellow fire fighters and everyone who supported them and the USDA Forest Service as an agency. The need to better understand fire behavior and help prevent future losses like this directly led to the development of a nationwide Forest Service fire research program, the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders and the Forest Service National Technology and Development Program. On September 12, 1960, the Northern Forest Fire Laboratory was dedicated in Missoula, Montana. Since then, the name has changed to the Rocky Mountain Research Station Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, or as it’s more commonly known, “The Fire Lab”. While the name has changed, the research remains focused on understanding fire behavior, fuel conditions, fire weather, and using the best available technology to put tools, data, maps, and knowledge in the hands of people managing fire on the ground. And that goes both ways – as fire personnel test new technology, they give researchers feedback on what works, what doesn’t, what they need. This two-way conversation between research and the user community is invaluable for advancing efforts to make firefighting safer, especially under the extreme weather and fuel conditions that we see today.

A lot has changed in fire management and research in the 75 years since the Mann Gulch Fire, but the lessons from this incident continue to play a pivotal role in day-to-day wildland fire operations. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group, or NWCG, maintains Staff Ride resources, 6 Minutes for Safety, and a collection of historic photographs all related to Mann Gulch. NWCG also partnered with the Fire Lab, the Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest, local historians, and retired Forest Service employee Dave Turner to produce a series of videos that tell the story of the Mann Gulch Fire, the lives lost, and lessons learned. Several of the videos take viewers on a tour through Mann Gulch itself, providing an opportunity for site-level learning and interpretation. The videos, NWCG resources, and a collection of photos can be found at https://firelab.org/project/mann-gulch-history.