Uncertainty and imagination. A history of fire management in Glacier and beyond, told through three 20th century fires and a visit to the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab. To what extent can we—or should we—control nature?

Glacier Conservancy: https://glacier.org/headwaters Frank Waln music: https://www.instagram.com/frankwaln/ Stella Nall art: https://www.instagram.com/stella.nall/

Daniel: [moody chords start] Headwaters is brought to you by the park's nonprofit partner, the Glacier Conservancy. Donations from listeners to the Conservancy are what make Headwaters possible. If you'd like to support the show, go to glacier.org. Beyond that, leaving a review in your podcast app or sending this episode to a friend is a big help. Music: ["Origins" by Frank Waln plays. Distorted vocals read: "What we see in the park today and its origins about a million years ago."] Gaby: [moody chords continue] It's August 1929. It's been hot and dry for a long, long time. And a whisper smoke rises over a ridge just outside of Glacier National Park. In a matter of hours, that distant west becomes a monster of a fire. And it's headed toward the park. It's called the Half Moon Fire. And Harry Gisborne is watching through wire rimmed glasses. [music fades out] He's taking scientific measurements from a vantage point high above the fire's path. Recording his observations. Harry Gisborne [Voice Actor]: [moody bass fades in] The great pillar of smoke belching from the north face of the mountain seem to move slowly. Black bodies of unburned gases would push their fungoid heads to the surface of the column, change to the orange of flame as they reached oxygen, and then to the dusty gray of smoke. Huge bulges would grow slowly on the side of the column, obliterating other protuberances, and being in turn engulfed [bass fades out]. Gaby: The thinking at the time is that even a raging fire like this would move across a land at no more than one mile an hour. But the wind picks up, and as Gisborne watches, the half moon fire boils over. He turns and runs along the ridge to safety. Looking back long enough to see what he calls a fire whirl, a tornado of fire, it burns two square miles in just a minute or two. His heart is pounding from adrenaline and from the thrill of discovery. He didn't know a fire could do this. A few miles north. Park Service staff in Bolton, which is now called West Glacier, meet in the fire cache to get shovels and backpacks of gear. The National Park Service is only 13 years old and glaciers, few rangers are spread out across the park's million acres. But no matter how many men they gather or what tools they grab, [starting flute notes of 'Wild West" by Frank Waln fade in] they weren't ever going to stop these fires. How could they fight something that they couldn't even begin to imagine? Still, the experience of trying [drumbeat starts] will shape fire response for the next century. [string instrument begins] This is Headwaters, a show about how Glacier National Park is connected to everything else. Music: ["Wild West" plays] Peri: This season is called Switchback. It's a collection of stories from the park's 20th century. [music fades out] These are moments when the direction of history took a sharp turn. I'm Peri. Gaby: And I'm Gaby. Peri: Wildfire has been part of this landscape forever. You might have seen some of the intense fires in recent years on the news or had to experience the intensity for yourself. How we fight fires across the country today has a history, and it can be traced back to Glacier. This episode is about the changing role of technology in wildfire management, and our changing attitudes toward fire from suppression to acceptance... kind of. We ask: do bulldozers belong in national parks? Does wildfire belong in a national park? To some, all of this is an uncertain proposition. Sound effects: [door squeaking open, footsteps] Daniel [to Peri]: Okay, Peri. We're going into the library. What are you. What are you hoping to find today? Peri [to Daniel]: So, we're coming into the library to look at some old issues of the Hungry Horse News. We're hoping to look at some issues from 1967 and 1988, which were big fire years in the park. And the back issues are bound in this gigantic book that's like three feet tall. [paper rubbing sounds] Each of these weighs like 15 pounds [laughs]. [thudding sound] Okay. So we're looking for, [page turning sounds] I think, mid-September, but you just kind of flip through and flip through and see what you find. And like, there's discussion about these fires, and about Night of the Grizzlies and what is fire's role in a national park? Like does it belong here? But there's also... just random local coverage like here, there's a photo [laughs] of a little boy with a skunk. The caption reads: "Stinky eats dog food, liverwurst, ice cream, and is real affectionate." [laughs] Daniel [to Peri]: And when's this from? Peri [to Daniel]: This is 1967. In the fall. [page turning sounds] Smoking rocks would come from out of the void, landing on the asphalt. It was no place for man to be. Daniel [to Peri]: Fun summer. Peri [to Daniel]: [laughs] It was a dramatic summer in the park and I imagine it was probably a pretty hard one... to be here for. [page turn, transitioning into drumbeat] Peri: On a hundred degree day in July, Madeline and I drove down to Missoula to tour a pivotal site in fire history and fire science. Peri [in the field]: Actually, maybe take a left and we'll go around the back on Fire Cache Way. Yeah, it's kind of appropriate, it's a pretty smoky day. Ooh, Helicopter! There's a helicopter flying just like, 100 feet over us. This is also the smoke jumper base, you can probably hear it if you open the windows. Sound effects: [car window rolling down, sound of helicopter blades thwopping increases] Peri [in the field]: I bet they're going to repel out of that helicopter. Peri [in the field]: Oh my god! They are! So we are here for a tour of the fire lab. [drum fades out, helicopter still audible in background] I've just always heard about and seen reference to all this cool science and research that comes out of here... and so it's kind of cool to actually be here. I'm very excited. And I hope we get to light some stuff on fire. [door opening] Hello! Woman #1: Come on in. I'm... Peri [to Woman #1]: Thanks. Peri: Harry Gisborne, who watched the Half Moon Fire's history-making blow up, was the foremost fire scientist of his time. Today, his portrait hangs in the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory. Peri [to Woman #1]: Ohhh... that is striking [Woman #1 laughs]. It does really feel like he's kinda... Woman #1: He's always, like, lit up in the hallway— Peri [to Woman #1]: And looking at you— Woman #1: I know right. Peri [to Woman #1]: —expectantly. And also, like "make good choices." Peri: He's not wearing his glasses in his portrait, but his keen gaze meets everyone who walks up the front steps of the fire lab. My tour guide is Dr. Sara McAllister, who greeted me looking equally ready to write a scientific paper or go for a 30-mile bike ride. She's a research mechanical engineer who studies the physics of fire behavior. Peri [to Sara]: So every time, you know, people drive by their local ranger station and see Smokey Bear out there with the arrow pointing to the fire danger... that— Sara: Yup. Peri [to Sara]: —that came out of this lab. Sara: That came out, still comes out of this lab. Peri [to Sara]: Cool. Sara: It's been rebooted and and revised somewhat recently by my colleague whose office is right there. Matt Jolly [laughs]. Peri [to Sara]: Wow. Sara: So it's still you know, we're still updating it and revising it and... trying to take into account new knowledge and— Peri [to Sara]: Mhm. Sara: —new, you know, climate factors and things like that. Peri [to Sara]: Yeah. Peri: But to understand fire management now we have to go back over a century. Even before the Half Moon Fire in August of 1910, 3 million acres of mostly national forest land burned in just two days in what became known as the big burn. Sara: Very formative, right. And the Forest Service at this point was only about five years old. And it's a little bit of history about forest service right, or... something that's kind of not... not too obvious. Is it's under the Department of Agriculture? Right. Peri [to Sara]: Right. Sara: Not the Department of Interior, like all of the land management agencies. And the history of that goes back to the fact that the Forest Service has always been a timber management agency. Peri [to Sara]: Right, like trees are a crop— Sara: Trees are a crop. We're supposed to be raising them, and harvesting them— Peri [to Sara]: Mhm. Sara: —and providing wood for the country, basically, right— Peri: And the Forest Service didn't want to see 3 million acres of its crop on fire. Sara: —and that prompted Harry Gisborne to start thinking about fire and trying to put some pieces together—. Peri [to Sara]: Mhm. Sara: —to be able to recognize days that are high fire danger— Peri [to Sara]: Mmm. Sara: —and what are the factors that are driving you know, these these crazy, insane fires. Peri: Gisborne and his peers devoted their careers to the science of fire, asking questions and finding answers to understand it all a little better. And take just a bit of the uncertainty out of what a fire might do. But at the time it was all in service of putting fires out more effectively and safely. At the time, most people thought that fire did not belong on the landscape. Fire was the enemy. Archival Audio: [male chorus of voices singing "Look down, look down, that lonesome road."] Certainly no road is more lonesome and desolate than a road through a burned over blackened and ugly forest. [chorus sings: "Look down, look down, that lonesome..." and fades out] Man #1: Northern Rockies has been a really central in developing American fire policy, largely because of the Forest Service. But it also was influential thanks to Glacier in shaping National Park Service policy. Peri: As Glacier goes, so goes the nation. This is Dr. Stephen Pyne, an expert on American wildfire history. Steve: I'm Steve Pyne. I'm basically a fire historian, also an emeritus professor at Arizona State University and, an urban farmer. Peri: The late 20s were a tough time here. The park had only been founded a few years ago in 1910, and it had very limited resources to fight fires in those decades. Steve: In the 20s. You don't really have a core of firefighters that you can draw on. You're just pulling people out of bars and, you know, unemployment offices or they got laid off from the railroad, and they're just raw labor. Peri: Needless to say [laughing], this did not go very well. It was hard to convince people to do this dirty and dangerous work. And most who agreed to help were at best, reluctant, and at worst, drunk. But they were the only option. And the young Park Service felt like they needed to throw everything they had at these fires, including money they didn't have. Steve: The Park Service spent... oh I think it was about $300,000 or something, which was a huge amount of money back then, putting out these fires. The assistant director, Horace Albright, was sent out personally to supervise, and... it was a real stunner. Peri: They couldn't stop those fires. And for an agency that saw their identity and purpose as protecting these park lands, particularly from fire, this was devastating. And the consequences burned the entire Park Service. Steve: To pay for that, it had to take the money for fighting the fire out of its regular budget, which meant shutting down some small parks and other facilities because they simply couldn't afford to pay for them anymore. So this was an agency-wide trauma. Peri: Just a few months after the 1929 Half Moon Fire, that burned through West Glacier, the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. When FDR took office and created the Civilian Conservation Corps, hundreds of thousands of young men were sent west. An instant infusion of labor, that was desperately needed. Steve: Almost overnight, you could create an infrastructure for fire. You could get lookout towers, get trails. You could get telephone lines to lookouts and between guard posts and so forth. So you create for the first time, really an infrastructure for fire. Peri: No longer limited by a shortage of men, the systems they created helped take some of the chaos and the uncertainty, and some of the fear, out of the threat of wildfire. They may not have been able to remove fire altogether, but they could try to spot every single fire and put it out by 10 am the next morning. Archival Audio: [mellow chords fade in] And fires were suppressed even when they were ignited naturally [fire burning and crackling]. We had little knowledge of the impact of our actions. [chords fade out] Peri: This boom lasted for about ten years until the country entered World War Two. And those young men all joined the military. But the war brought about a different kind of boom [moody chords fade in] that would change firefighting forever. Music: [chords play] Gaby: It's August 1967. Fires are ripping through Glacier. One is on the west edge of the park, right above the brand-new Camas Road and the proposed Glacier View Dam site. In fact, it's in the same spot as one of the costly fires of the late 1920s. Another one is right in the heart of the park. [chords fade out] That one is burning east, along Going-to-the-Sun Road. Willie Colony is sweating. He's smoking cigarettes to calm his nerves as he drives up the road. He's the park's fire control officer and he's doing a final sweep of the closed road to make sure no one gets trapped. But he knows that the further he drives uphill, toward the Loop, [bass fades in] the closer he's getting to the path of the fire. Glacier only has a few dozen staff who double as firefighters, and they've all been called in. The local Flathead Hotshots are also on-scene. Everyone wants to suppress these fires. They've summoned crews from as far away as Alaska to help, alongside smokejumpers who will parachute into the fire. Big, heavy bulldozers are carving miles of fireline to stop its spread. They're trying to regain a bit of certainty, a bit of control, but they're not going to get it. And the scars left behind by those efforts will remain on the landscape for decades. The air is thick with smoke and Willie has to drive slower and slower as visibility gets worse. In the thick smoke, it's hard to know whether to keep driving, hoping it's better up ahead or turn around, wondering if the road behind him is already blocked by flames. [bass fades out] Time has blurred the edges of this story. But some say will these shelters from the flames in the long tunnel on the way to the Loop. Years later, we'll hear his story from someone who worked with him, and how together they helped Glacier reconsider its relationship with fire [moody chords fade in]. Steve: After World War Two and especially Korea, huge amounts of stuff become available. You've lost the CCC. You've lost that sort of human muscle. [chords fade out] But you can replace it with mechanical muscle from war surplus equipment. Peri: In the 1950s and 60s, there were new tools in the battle with fire. Instead of men with shovels, you had everything the U.S. military had to offer. Steve: In fact, equipment centers are created, the Forest Service developed several, simply dedicated to converting military equipment into firefighting equipment. So lots of trucks, bulldozers, helicopters, airplanes. The surplus of equipment made it economically possible to continue firefighting. And in this case, even militarize it in a certain sense. And so you've got a lot to throw at it. And firefighting continues to be effective. Peri: The goal was the same: to put out every fire. This new machinery was more effective and more destructive, too. But at the same time, scientific innovations were also adding other tools to the arsenal. Sara: I hate to say nowhere else in the world has wind tunnel facilities [Peri laughs] like this? But they're are few and far between [Sara laughs]. Right? Peri [to Sara]: Cool. Sara: So it's a metal wind tunnel that's not flammable that you can light things on fire in— Peri [to Sara]: Wow. Sara: —and measure how quickly they spread in a wind. Not too many exist. Peri: Because wind is fundamental to fire. Sara: Oh, for sure. So without wind, your fire is not really a problem. You've put it out by then because it's not going anywhere very fast, right— Peri: When fires do crazy things, usually wind is involved. Sara: Oh yeah, like almost 100%. Wind and topography. Topography can also be pretty tricksy. Peri [to Sara]: Sure. Sara: I mean, let me turn the lights on in here [mechanical clicking]. So it's a wind tunnel big enough to actually stand up in. Peri [to Sara]: Whoa! [mechanical clicking] Okay. So on one side, there's this little red wind tunnel that sort of looks like a it's like maybe three feet by three feet. But then on the left is this like... full size one... Sara: It's about nine feet by nine feet. Peri [to Sara]: —yeah. You could stand in it. You could get it. It looks like there's little tinfoil things in there. I feel like I see charcoal [laughs] fire remnants. Peri: It was an exciting time to be a fire scientist. Some were using those very wind tunnels to try and figure out exactly how a fire spreads. Other scientists were testing new ideas about where fire belongs in a landscape. And crews in the field were getting to see it all unfold firsthand. No one knew it at the time, but 1967 would be the fire year that started to change everything. And a young Midwesterner named Rick Trembath watched it all happen. Rick: Yeah. I'm Rick Trembath. I came out in 1967 to be on the Flathead Hotshot crew at age 18 from northern Minnesota. And at that time the prerequisites for hiring was if you were a forestry student, a male, and an athlete, they were interested in you. Peri: This was the very first season for the brand-new Flathead Hotshot Crew, a high-level fire crew that was based right outside the park. Rick: I remember coming out with my parents, they drove me out from Minnesota... in June and... it was raining, a lot. And I'm wondering about, you know, "why did I sign up to be on a fire crew if it's raining all the time?" Peri: But sure enough, it dried out around 4th of July. And by August, there were two major fires burning in Glacier. The first started on Huckleberry Mountain, right across the river from Rick's camp. It was called the Flathead Fire, or the Huckleberry Fire. And Rick's crew was right in the thick of it. Rick: There was a lot of camaraderie with the other members of the crew. It was a family. You know, we got to know each other. And then we started the adventures of going out on fires. And you camp together, you eat together, you do everything together. All summer long. We were 40 days through July, all of August and part of September, without a day off. Peri: They were working their hardest, 40 days in a row, no less, to put the fires out, in line with the fire suppression policy at the time. Rick: So in 1967, fire was all bad. We very aggressively fought fire and to the detriment of safety. We we ended up with a lot of injuries and accidents as a result. But in '67, I was brand new to to fire and to this area. And so I just basically was a person that did what he was told. The one real memorable experience I have, though, was where we did cross the Flathead River. It took two trips with a D8 for our whole crew of 25 to get across on the dozer. Peri [to Rick]: What's a D8? Rick: D8 dozer? Peri [to Rick]: So you rode the dozer across the river? Rick: Yeah. [Peri laughs] Yeah. The river was so low, it didn't push water with the fans. Peri: Dozer is fire speak for a bulldozer. And they were used extensively to try and corral the Flathead Fire, their speed and power overcoming the limitations of a hand crew. Rick: For us in the hotshot crew business, we used shovels and pulaskis. It takes a lot of work to build a little fireline. A dozer can push one in a matter of seconds, so... very aggressive at trying to work a fireline along the edge of a fire. Peri: Bulldozers were actually invented, maybe, to use for suppressing wildfires. Here's Stephen Pyne again. Steve: Well, that's a murky story, and I've tried to confirm what I understand to be the story, and I can't, but I can't unconfirm it either. So the story I have is that the winter of 1927, in California, a guy with the Forest Service, and a guy with the Bureau of Roads, got together and decided it would be great if they had a better device for making firebreaks, firelines. Basically, the bulldozer was really a mechanical mule. It pulled a plow behind it. And they got the idea of putting a movable blade on the front, and that created the bulldozer. Peri: The problem, as you might imagine, is that using a bulldozer to plow a fireline leaves quite a scar behind. Steve: A bulldozer, provides a lot of mechanical muscle to punch through difficult terrains like forests and scrape a fairly good wide fireline. It's a brutal way to do it. And you're uprooting, you're removing stuff, you're taking the soil down to where it can erode if it rains. But you can put in effective firelines... pretty quickly. And that's why bulldozers remained, where the values are high, or you're protecting communities or something, a standard tool. But they come with a lot of costs. And the scar is not easily healed. Peri: The Flathead Fire was burning quite close to a lot of roads and bridges and buildings, so using bulldozers seemed warranted at the time. The dozers cut 28 miles of line around that fire, pushing down trees, digging up and plowing under pine needles and duff into a clear-cut scrape around the flames. But they were also used on the other fire burning at the time, the Glacier Wall Fire. This one was right in the center of the park, burning on the slopes beneath a steep cliff that you can see on your left as you drive up Going-to-the-Sun Road past Avalanche Creek. The bulldozers ripped a nine-mile line of forest down to bare soil around that fire. Archival Audio: The bulldozers, by some rule that governs them, seem to aim first at the most beautiful, wild places of America. [fades out] Peri: Rick looks back and thinks about those dozers differently now. Rick: My philosophy has changed to the point where I feel like a lot of what we did in the '67 fires was inappropriate. Those scars are still on the land. So the Flathead Fire previously burned in the 1926 fire. And then it's burned again in the 2001 Moose Fire. So the same acreage I've seen burn three different fires. And you know what? It's going to burn again. Peri [to Rick]: When you walk around or drive around this area now, how do you feel looking at, you know, that north side of Huckleberry Mountain: seeing the places that burned, seeing the dozer lines? Rick: I have more of a problem seeing the dozer lines than I do the fire area because they shouldn't be there, especially on the scree slope that you can see on the other side, you know, right across from Glacier View Mountain? Fire areas are all growing back. They just look like part of the natural forested landscape. Peri [to Rick]: And so it's been 57 years and there's... you can still see it. Rick: Yup, you can still see them. Peri: As it turned out, 1967 would be the last gasp for that era of single-minded fire suppression. But change came slowly. Archival Audio: [sound of heavy machinery fades in] ...into parking lots. That is how America the Beautiful is becoming America, the Bulldozed. Woman #2: And then in fall of '73, I got a ride to the top of the pass and I rode down the pass on my bicycle to West Glacier, where I lived for most of the winter, doing volunteer work in the research office. Peri [to Woman #2]: Oh, cool. Peri: I've moved to and from West Glacier plenty of times in my seasonal career, but never by bike. This is Jane Kapler Smith. Jane: I really think of that time as a period when the approach to fire was growing... it was developing. So '67... people when I got there and '70, people were still traumatized from the two big fires, big severe fires, plus the grizzly fatalities from 1967— Peri [to Jane]: True. Jane: —those two things were interwoven and and [faint bird sounds in background] people were just... astounded. And I think also terrified— Peri [to Jane]: Mhm. Jane: —that that sort of thing could happen. Peri: August 1967 was a tough month in the park. Within one week, there were those two major fires burning: the Flathead Fire and the Glacier Wall Fire. But there was also an infamous bear attack. Two young backpackers had been found dead on the same night, but in different areas of the park, after they were dragged out of their campsites by grizzly bears. It came to be known as the Night of the Grizzlies. Jane: So you can see when I got there in '70 and people were talking about fire, there was this... drama, glamor, fear... all together. Peri: Jane worked in Glacier for the rest of the '70s, then went to grad school in fire ecology and ended up working at the Missoula Fire Lab for over 20 years. But those first seasons in Glacier were her introduction to fire. Jane: So there was a clerk typist opening in the fire control office. Peri [to Jane]: Uh-huh. Jane: Working for Willie Colony, who was the fire control officer. He was a chain-smoker [Peri laughs]. I was in this little tiny basement office and my workspace was... you know how desks have those pull out little ledge. I had a typewriter on that ledge [Peri laughs] and Willie was over to my side, smoking [Peri laughs]. But brilliant man and total fun. So Steve Kessell came in, who turned out to be a key researcher in just developing fire ecology in the park. And he and Willie started talking about how fires really needed to burn more. Peri [to Jane]: Hm. Jane: And here I am with my ears getting [Peri laughs], you know, longer and longer listening to this thing. Really? Huh. Never thought about that. Peri: A few years after Jane's ears started growing longer, she decided she wanted to see for herself what her boss was talking about. Jane: And walked that fireline. Peri [to Jane]: Wow. Jane: In '77, it was... the fire was ten years old. We bushwhacked up to the foot of Heaven's Peak and went down the Glacier Wall fireline, which you can still see from the High Line trail, vividly—. Peri [to Jane]: Ohhh. Jane: —take your binoculars. You can see that trail... dozer line in the middle of Glacier Park. Peri [to Jane]: So it was coming up underneath that cliff— Jane: Right. Peri [to Jane]: —and then they put a dozer line on top of a cliff. Jane: Atop. Exactly. Peri [to Jane]: That seems crazy to me. I mean, I'm not a suppression... specialist— Jane: They had bulldozers— Peri [to Jane]: —but that seems crazy. Jane: Come on! [Peri laughs]They had to use them! Come on. Peri [to Jane]: That, in some ways seems to encapsulate fire [Jane laughs] management of the '50s, '60. It's like, well, we have the dozers, we have the aircraft... Jane: So we can... so what that means is we could really eliminate risk in this direction, that direction. Yeah. Whether— Peri [to Jane]: At what cost. Jane: —we need to or not. Peri: You know that old saying "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." But by the '70s, the broader approach to fire management, by the government, was starting to change. People both within the fire community, and outside it, were questioning the need for total suppression of fire. Managers were no longer limited by what technology they could use, but what they should use. And fire ecologists in a handful of parks were starting to understand that fire belonged in these landscapes, something that many tribes have understood and practiced for millennia. But it's one thing to understand the ecology and another thing to accept the risk and uncertainty that come with allowing fire to have its place in a national park. But a new tool was starting to arrive in park offices that would help reduce that uncertainty. Jane: When I started working for Glacier in... for the Park Service in the summer of '73, there were [Peri laughs] no computer programing positions. Peri [to Jane]: Wow. Jane: And Willie and I both learned Fortran and started programing. So here comes this guy who wants to do computer modeling of the vegetation following fire... [voice fades and continues playing in the background] Peri: This work has a lot of pieces: fire ecology, physical science, and computer modeling. Jane and Willie's work helped put all these pieces together. In the field, in Glacier, and at the Fire Lab in Missoula. But even so, it took time to put it into practice. Jane: So maybe it was just good luck that in the '70s we had fairly moderate weather. We had occasional fires. Everybody got exciting when a lightning, you know, [Peri laughs] forecast was in. But... we didn't have major fires through the time I worked there. Peri [to Jane]: So you say you got excited when there was lightning because you... hoped that there would be a fire to test out some of this new— Jane: Oh we didn't [voices overlapping] get to that point early on— Peri [to Jane]: —not yet. Jane: The fire crews got excited because they saw overtime. Peri [to Jane]: Yeah. [Jane's laugh fades out] Peri: Jane handed me a piece of paper with a long list of every fire in the park from 1967 through the end of the century. On the right-hand side of the page, for every fire, there's a line that says how the park responded to it. Did they try and put it out right away? Or did they just contain it, and monitor it, for the health of the forest? [voices fade in] Jane: ...that's right. So here's Huckleberry: suppression. And it's not in their table, but I mean, they meant suppression... with dozer lines. So— Peri [to Jane]: So you have '67: management strategies: suppression, control. Jane: Control, control, control— Peri [to Jane]: '68 to '87. Numerous fires: suppression. Control. [laughs]. Jane: Yep, that's right. [Peri laughs] Now here's here's Logging Fire. Now we get a little bit of prescrib— a little bit of prescribed fire— Peri [to Jane]: Ohhh. Okay. Jane: —and this: '84, I think, is the first fire that they actually said, "oh, we don't have to completely put it out.". Peri [to Jane]: Yeah, it says suppression containment. Jane: Yeah. Peri [to Jane]: —not... Jane: But it wasn't "we've got to— Peri [to Jane]: Control... Jane: —beat it down all the way around." Peri [to Jane]: Yeah. Huh. Jane: —and I remember that because Willie and I would write letters or correspond. And I remember him writing or maybe telling me on the phone: "we finally had a fire that we didn't totally stomp out." Peri [to Jane]: Wow. Peri: After decades of suppression, suppression, control, control, the mid-1980s marked a turning point. Over the course of a few small fires, the park starts to actually put into practice what they learned over the last few decades. But if you know anything about wildfire, you probably know what's coming in 1988. Archival Audio: Good evening from the news station. [string music plays in background] I'm Al Nash with this special report on the fires which have plagued the northeast corner of Yellowstone National Park today [fades out]. Peri: It was an infamous fire year in Yellowstone. Hundreds of thousands of acres burned, with national media fixated on the story. And Glacier had its very own dramatic fire later that fall, the Red Bench Fire. That one burned across a mix of jurisdictions: Park Service, Forest Service, and privately-owned land, homes, and businesses, each one bringing a different tolerance for uncertainty. Jane: '88... Yellowstone on fire and Red Bench at the same time. And there was this reversal: "we're going to put out fires. We don't want to do this anymore." Peri [to Jane]: Like, this has gone too far. No more. Jane: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we can't. It's too risky. Peri: The Red Bench Fire in 1988 burned thousands of acres in its first few days. It burned right through the community of Polebridge just outside the park, destroying multiple buildings. And sure enough, [drumbeat fades in] the dozers came right back out again. Music: [Music plays, fades out] Peri [to Daniel]: So I'm back in the library looking for coverage of the 1988 Red Bench Fire [paper rustling]. Here is the opinion page. And people are debating... they're not only debating whether bulldozers belong in '88, but they're looking backward at their use in 1967. Daniel [to Peri]: I think we want to look at the front page back here. Peri [to Daniel]: Let's just check [paper rustling]. Daniel [to Peri]: Yeah, it's right here. Peri [to Daniel]: Oh. [gasp] Daniel [to Peri]: See, this is the dramatic one. Peri [to Daniel]: Okay. So most of this most of the paper is black and white, but they did a color nighttime photo of trees torching. Daniel [to Peri]: A column of hellish flames on the front page of the paper [both laughing]. What's the headline? Peri [to Daniel]: Pretty much. Peri [to Daniel]: Well, the main headline is "Red Bench Fire lights up region." And then right below it says "Dozers reluctantly rolled onto park ground." God. There's a deer burned to a crisp, titled "Fire victim. Carcass was near Polebridge." This is interesting. Superintendent Gil Lusk last week allowed fire officials to use, "whatever was necessary to contain the burn. That included bulldozers to cut fireline." Daniel [to Peri]: I want to read this one. Where does he say it? "'We would have liked to have done it some other way, but we didn't have the luxury of not using dozers,' Lusk said. 'We were serious about getting this fire out.'" Huh. [moody chords fade in] Peri [to Daniel]: Interesting. Yeah. I guess it's one thing to abstractly feel like fire is something that belongs in a national park, but it's a very different thing once flames are headed toward Polebridge. Music: [Music plays] Gaby: It's the fall of 1973. A cool wind is rustling. The yellow aspen leaves and bald eagles are starting to congregate in Glacier on their way south. Meanwhile, a young woman named Jane is also migrating. She's packing up at the end of her third summer in the park. Everything she owns fits in a backpack, albeit a very large one. After three seasons of working at a lodge on the east side, she's thrilled to have a winter position volunteering at Park Headquarters. It will be just the start of a long, exciting career in fire science. But at this point, she still uncertain of her path. Jane doesn't have a car, so she wheels her bike out to Going-to-the-Sun Road and catches a ride from Saint Mary up to Logan Pass. From there, she unloads her bike, straps on her giant backpack, and flies down the west side of the road. [music fades out] Despite the cool wind making her eyes water, she can see evidence of recent wildfires. Blackened snags hint at past dramas while green regrowth springs back to life. Across the valley, the paths of bulldozer lines are also still visible along the cliff edge. She brakes hard ahead of the switchback at the Loop, then squints in the sudden darkness of the West Tunnel, where her future boss, Willie Colony, maybe took refuge from the flames that burned up the slope six years ago. But she hasn't met him yet and hasn't heard this story yet. She puts her head down, relaxes her grip and coasts toward West Glacier [bass fades in]. Daniel: Because of the volatile nature of the Red Bench Fire, unusual measures had to be taken. It was fought with heavy machinery, bulldozers. Willie Colony is coordinating the park's fire rehabilitation, he said. We will try to obliterate those bulldozer scars as much as possible. Hungry Horse News, 1988. [bass sounds closer, drumbeat switches between left and right channels, then sounds further away] Music: [music comes closer, "Origin" by Frank Waln plays: "Origins. Origins. Origins. What we see in the park today. Today. What we see in the park today, had it's origins about a million years ago. Origins. Origins. Or-origins. Origins. Origins. About a million years ago. Origins. Origins. Origins. Or-origins. What we see in the park today, had its origins about a million years ago."] Peri [to Sara]: What? What was the cutting edge of the technology in like 1960? When this place opened. Sara: [whispering] I'll show you. [Peri gasps, Sara laughs] Let's go in the burn chamber. [Peri gasps] Peri [to Sara]: Are we gonna see flames? Sara: We could. Peri [to Sara]: Wow. Okay. We're in this giant corrugated metal square room with all these pipes, and there's this giant table in the middle, and... Wow. Sara: Yeah [laughs]. Peri [to Sara]: It smells a little... like... formerly fiery. Sara: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of— Peri [to Sara]: Things have been burned here. Sara: So the burn chamber itself is about 40 feet by 40 feet, and then it's 70 feet tall. Way, way up there, too. So this is where we do other experiments that don't require wind. Peri [to Sara]: Ah, ok. Sara: So this big, huge beast of a thing sitting in the middle of the floor right now is we call it "Big Sandy," Peri [to Sara]: Big Sandy... Sara: Because it is a big sand burner— Peri [to Sara]: Kay. Sara: And it's got a pneumatic lift that we can use to adjust the slope— Peri [to Sara]: Okay. Sara: —so it's our big tilting burn bed where we can look at these slope— Peri [to Sara]: Slope affects how fire moves too. Sara: Yes. Peri [to Sara]: There are many knobs [Sara laughs] and tubes and dials for the record [laughs]. Sara: And like four big huge tanks of propane in the back. Peri [to Sara]: Wow! [voices fade out] Peri: Sarah reached for a jug of propane, and it seemed like my dream of seeing flames was gonna come true. But instead of going over to Big Sandy, she poured some of the fuel into a tall, see-through column. Sara: —spiral on the bottom. [in background, "wow"] So as it's pulling in the air, the air is being pulled in in a spinning motion— Peri [to Sara]: Ohhh. Sara: —so once we get it going and it'll light up, you'll see it'll kind of like take a second, but it'll spin up and and turn into a fire whirl. Peri [to Sara]: Cool. Sara: I'm going to give her a go here before too much evaporates [lighter clicking]. Peri [to Sara]: [gasp] Look at it go! Okay. So it's kind of going up normally? The way that it would, but it's starting to rotate [rustling sounds, gasp]. I love fire. [gasps] It's going in a circle. Look! It's making a whirl! It's like a tiny tornado! [gasp] Wow. Ooh, I feel the heat. Wow. Sara: So... fire whirls are kind of one of those things that happen on tons of different fires. They can be totally innocuous on a prescribed fire. They'll form like just a little whirl, maybe on the backside— Peri [to Sara]: It's like a tiny little tornado. Sara: —of a tree, tiny little tornado that you're like [in high pitch] "oh isn't that cute!" Peri [to Sara]: Like a whirlpool in a... river— Sara: Right, exactly— Peri [to Sara]: —like a, it goes around a rock. Peri [to Sara]: — and they form in a very similar fashion, right? So the way this is designed is we've restricted the air to come in through this, these ducts— Peri [to Sara]: Ohh, it like makes a spiral on the bottom. Sara: —that are in a spiral— Peri [to Sara]: So you both light things on fire and you have these wind tunnels, and to be able to do both of those things is like the advent or the— Sara: Yes, that we needed a building like this to be able to do it. Peri [to Sara]: The raison d'etre of this— Sara: You got it. Peri [to Sara]: —lab. Like every every day I get to actually come into the lab and do experiments is a very good day. I fully love my job because [Peri laughs] I do get to lay things on fire for a living [both laugh, audio fades out]. So, yes, every... Peri: Scientists have learned a lot over the past century about the intricacies of how fire operates. And fire models have gotten really good, in large part thanks to work done at the Missoula Fire Lab. But still, there's a lot more that goes into the decision making equation on a fire. Jane: And that's kind of the pattern, I think, for fire that we want to have fire doing its thing. And we know there are benefits, and we also know that we can't escape it... we're going to have fire. And at the same time, the minute you say, "oh, let's not control on this flank, let's not let's not put anything out." Woah... even partial fire use, it's really scary because things get burned up. People hate smoke— Peri [to Jane]: And even however rare that is, it really looms large— Jane: You know it's possible [sound of hand slapping leg]— Peri [to Jane]: —in the memory— Jane: We see it... [audio fades out] Peri: But those computer programs that Jane first started working with in the '70s... by the '90s, they were starting to be able to predict how a wildfire might spread over hours, days or even weeks. In 1994, there was a new fire start called the Howling Fire in the backcountry of Glacier. It was only a few acres and fire managers thought it could potentially do some good, ecologically. But other staff were concerned it might burn toward the village of Apgar. After a call to the Fire Lab and some overnight model runs on a hard-working computer, a black and white map arrived by fax. Each differently patterned blob on the map showed the probability that the fire would burn a certain area, and it showed that it was pretty unlikely to move toward the homes and businesses in Apgar and West Glacier. Knowing this, the park superintendent felt comfortable keeping the fire. It ended up burning about 2000 acres, never approaching any roads or buildings, and adding to the diversity of habitat in the North Fork of the park. Sara: [indistinct voices audible in background] Well, I mean, the work is definitely evolved. I mean, as you know, one would hope over 50 years— Peri [to Sara]: I mean, sure. [both laugh] Sara: —that things I mean, we have different questions. We have sometimes we have the same questions, but we have new ways of approaching it— Peri [to Sara]: Mhm. Sara: —I mean, we looked at the difference in, for example, how the wind tunnel itself works, right? Peri [to Sara]: Yeah. Sara: —and we have ways of measuring things that you can only of imagined in the '70s. Peri [to Sara]: It seems like the fundamental question of the Fire Lab has always just been like, how does fire work and how does it move across the landscape? But over time, you guys have had different tools, like the advent of computers— Sara: Right. Peri [to Sara]: —different ways of measuring and approaching that, and tackling that problem. But the fundamental question has always been the same. Sara: Yeah. Yep. Yeah. And we're still working to answer it 50 plus years later. 60 years now. Peri [to Sara]: 64! [both laugh] And counting. Jane: I think overall in fire, as well as in many other aspects of our lives... I wish we were better at dealing with uncertainty. Peri [to Jane]: If we had the perfect model and could perfectly understand fire behavior, what would that do for us? What problems? Without solving what problems that not solve? [Jane laughs] Jane: Well, that's... it's not going to happen [Peri laughs] because... there are just too many variables— [bass begins building in background] Peri [to Jane]: And even if— Jane: —we know that. Peri [to Jane]: —there were a perfect fire behavior model, you don't have the perfect weather forecast. Jane: Exactly. So... if we had that perfect model, maybe then we wouldn't be deciding on risk. We'd be deciding on what to sacrifice. Peri [to Jane]: Hm. Jane: [blows air] So if your perfect model says, "hmm... these four buildings are going to go... should we sacrifice those for the sake of... perpetuating a species?" Whoa! Now that's creating a political risk! Peri [to Jane]: Maybe uncertainty sounds better now. Jane: [laughing, speaking more loudly] Maybe uncertainty sounding a little better. [Peri laughs] We have to live with the fire and we have to live with each other. Archival Audio: [keening strings and flute fade in] Fire is as necessary a factor in the determination of a natural ecosystem as is rain or snow or the sun itself. [music fades out] Peri: Living with fire is something that people talk about a lot today as both climate change and our history of fire suppression contribute to more intense fires. But it's not an easy thing to do... technology can help us, but there's no single tool that can answer all of our questions, or remove all the uncertainty. It's a complicated question. So we talked with someone who could visualize what living with fire looks like. Tony: We have a deep relationship with fire and our landscape because we've understood from from our ancestors in our cities since we've been here, that fire is part of this landscape. My name is Tony Incashola Jr. I'm a Confederated Salish Kootenai member, and I work for Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes. Peri: Tony is the director of Tribal Resource Management on the Flathead Indian Reservation. Tony: Our Tribe literally lived with with fire. We had special people called Sx͏ʷpaáms. Their job and their task was to go out and be prescribed fire igniters. And... there was never an issue because there was never any borders, never any fences, never any ownership at that point it was all... one landscape. Peri: Borders are one of the fundamental challenges for managing wildfire. In a society that sees land as property, as something that can be privately-owned, you inevitably encounter different opinions about how fire should be managed. Tony: As soon as pioneers or homesteaders moved further west and they seen the resources here, the first one that was obvious was the timber resources. And when Westerners came over here and seen our Tribe lighting fires and possibly burning up those valuable resources, it was halted right away. Ownership, resources, money... is what really drove drove out in banning our tribe from being able to practice our and continuing our cultural burning. Peri: And that cultural burning can accomplish a lot of different things. Tony: We've used fire in many different ways of not only clearing trails, clearing campsites, travel corridors, but we've also used fire for purposely setting to replenish certain medicinal plants, certain berries, certain first foods. Peri: First Foods is a term the Confederated Salish and Kootenai people used to describe the plants and animals that they've been living with since time immemorial. And these foods are often fire-dependent. Think about huckleberries or whitebark pine seeds. Tony: We were losing medicinal plant sites, first food harvest sites, our wild game, our berries. We had to start including all those type of thoughts into our forest management. It wasn't for growth and yield wasn't for maximum revenue retention anymore. It was for restoration. We've been managing for resiliency and health as opposed to crop and production. Peri: Uncertainty is inevitable with wildfire and sometimes there are negative impacts. But Tony explains both the ecological and cultural benefits that fire can bring. Tony: So one one prime example is is an area we call Jocko Prairie. Peri: Jocko Prairie is a high elevation meadow just north of Missoula, where trees had started to creep in due to a lack of fire. But instead of just growing timber, the Tribe wanted to burn the meadow to support all kinds of plants, especially camas, which are beautiful blue flowers whose bulbs are a first food. Tony: Previously there was very minimal, to little evidence of camas within that prairie, that meadow. And after fire, there was a carpet of camas that bloomed the next year. We're actually working on a project now and visiting with elders and looking at historical areas of where [sound of hand tapping table] are there more sites like this camas prairie site [string music fades in] or different types of gathering sites that are now overgrown or now unusable for historic reasons. And able to build a Cultural Burning Plan, Prescribed Fire Burning Plan, for cultural reasons, to restore these areas back to pre-European contact where we can gather those medicinal plants again. We feel a certain responsibility as stewards to the land. This is our land and we've. This is land that that has taken care of us and we know we need to take care of it. Living with fire has changed. Acceptance of fire is different than it used to be. Music: ["Runaway" by Frank Waln builds and plays] Gaby: This show is only possible because of donations to the Glacier National Park Conservancy. Learn more at glacier.org. If you like this episode, share it with a friend who might appreciate it. Also, we'd love it if you gave us a rating and review in your podcast app. Frank Waln makes our music and Stella Nall created our art. Check them out on Instagram. Headwaters is made by me. Gaby Eseverri, Daniel Lombardi, Peri Sasnett, Madeline Vinh and Michael Faist with support from Lacy Kowalski, Melissa Sladek, Elizabeth Maki and Sophia Britto. Thanks to our good friends in Glacier's Cultural Resources program, including Jean, Anya, Keiko, Sierra, Brent, and Kyle. We couldn't make the show without them. Special thanks this episode to Ilana Abrahamson, Thomas Dzumba, Jeremy Harker, Tony Incashola, Jr., Jane Kapler Smith, Dr. Sara McAllister, Dr. Stephen Pyne, Helen Smith, Rick Trembath, Lois Walker, Larry Wilson, and Dr. Vita Wright. Additional support for this episode came from the NPS Fire Communication and Education Grant program. Thanks for listening. Peri: Okay. The last thing I have to share is this Smokey Bear PSA from the '90s. Archival Audio: [Funky music starts: "One day these rats were playing in the woods." Sound of match being struck. "Wanted some matches and that's no good. Yow. Listen to Smokey before you give it a try..."] Smokey Bear: Only you— Archival Audio: ["Don't play with matches... don't play with fire." Beat drops. "Fire. Because there's nothing very funny about a freaked-out bunny, nothing very nice... about a homeless mice. So if a gorgeous forest is what you desire, don't play with matches... don't play with fire.] Smokey Bear: Only you can prevent wildfires. Music: [Fire!]