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OCTOBER 6, 2003
MICHAEL A. ROBERTO
ERIKA M. FERLINS
Fire at Mann Gulch
On August 5, 1949, twelve U.S. Forest Service (USFS) smokejumpers lost their lives in a fire at
Mann Gulch, Montana. What appeared to be a routine firefight turned disastrous as the men raced
frantically from an oncoming fire blowup. Less than two hours after they had parachuted from a
plane, the terrified crew found themselves caught between a raging fire and the rocky slope that
blocked their route to safety. Each person faced a frightening choice: race the fire to the top of the
ridge, or follow the foreman in what appeared to be a madman’s tactic. Only three men made it out
alive.
What caused this tragic accident? Some described the situation as a race that could not be won.1
Others argued that the crew’s foreman, Wagner Dodge, demonstrated poor leadership. Another
theory held that the tragedy resulted from the panicked reaction of an inexperienced crew.
Nonetheless, everyone agreed on one thing: the events that transpired at Mann Gulch would remain
etched in the minds of firefighters for generations to come.
Smokejumpers
Background
The USFS trained the smokejumpers—a highly select outfit created in 1940—to attack fires quickly
by parachuting onto them while they were still small. The USFS expected the smokejumpers to
attack Class C fires (10 to 99 acres), “putting [them] out so fast they don’t have time to become big
ones.”2 Rookie training was rigorous, and even the most hardened firefighters sometimes failed to
pass the test. Smokejumper training included an excruciating physical test, parachuting classes, and
the vicious “hell week,” where rookies had to dig fire lines for days at a time with no rest, and carry
their 85-pound packs through the woods for miles. At their base in Missoula, Montana, the
smokejumpers also embarked on a rigorous three-week training program at the beginning of each
fire season. The regimen conditioned the men, while teaching them to work together, react quickly,
and follow orders.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Professor Michael A. Roberto and Research Associate Erika M. Ferlins prepared this case. This case was developed from published sources. HBS
cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary data, or
illustrations of effective or ineffective management.
Copyright © 2003 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685,
write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, used in a spreadsheet, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the permission of Harvard Business School.
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Fire at Mann Gulch
Smokejumpers arrived from all over the country as forestry students, seasoned firefighters,
volunteers, and military veterans. Of the 15 men at Mann Gulch, 12 had served in the armed
services. They had been described as people who “love the universe but are not intimidated by it.”3
They were the best of the best, and they knew it. In the 1940s, smokejumpers boasted that they could
dig a trench around any fire by ten o’clock the next morning. Norman Maclean, author of Young Men
and Fire, a book that told the story of the Mann Gulch tragedy, described this elite group:
In 1949 the Smokejumpers were still so young that they referred affectionately to all fires as
“ten o’clock fires,” as if they already had them under control before they jumped. They were
still so young they hadn’t learned to count the odds and to sense they might owe the universe
a tragedy. . . . The requirements used in selecting the first crews of Smokejumpers give a rough
profile of the kind of men the Forest Service thought were needed to join sky with fire, and
these same requirements should have given the jumpers some idea of their life expectancy.
They had to be between twenty-one and twenty-five, in perfect health, not married, and
holding no job in the Forest Service as important as a ranger. So basically they had to be
young, tough, and in one way or another from the back country. . . . But one thing that remains
with Smokejumpers, no matter where they ultimately land, is the sense of being highly select
for life and of belonging for life to a highly select outfit, somewhat like the Marines, who know
what they are talking about when they speak of themselves as the proud and the few.4
By August 1949, the Missoula smokejumpers had jumped 337 times onto 89 fires.5 The USFS
assigned smokejumpers to fires on a rotating basis; thus, an individual did not fight each blaze along
with the same set of colleagues. When a man fought a fire, his name went to the bottom of the list of
available fighters. Only the freshest men jumped onto a fire, because the fire season was long and
grueling. Moreover, the cost of keeping separate crews during fire season proved to be prohibitive,
especially in the post-Depression years of the 1940s.
The Mann Gulch Crew
The smokejumpers who fought the Mann Gulch fire ranged in experience from a few months to
eight years. Dodge had served as a smokejumper since 1941, while Robert Sallee, a brash 17-year-old,
had lied about his age to become a smokejumper in the summer of 1949. The crew members—a
young and eager bunch—ranged in age from 17 to 28. For nine of the men in the outfit, 1949 marked
their first season as smokejumpers. In fact, Mann Gulch marked the first jump for Sallee and his
roommate, Walter Rumsey.6 For four others, it was their second season. Second-in-command Bill
Hellman had three years of experience—more than any crew member besides Dodge.7 (For a
detailed description of the entire crew, see Exhibit 1.)
Most of the crew members had never jumped together before the Mann Gulch fire. As one writer
noted, “A hardened set of individuals this group was; a hardened combat platoon it was not.”8 In
fact, many crew members had never worked with Dodge. In 1949 the USFS put Dodge in charge of
base maintenance at Missoula; therefore, he had missed the three-week summer training session.
However, the crew members knew his reputation from his years of smokejumper service, and they
respected his knowledge and experience. They described Dodge as fastidious and gifted with his
hands, probably due to his years of living and fighting fires in the woods.
Many smokejumpers considered Dodge to be a man of few words. His wife concurred: “He said
to me when we were first married, ‘You do your job and I’ll do mine, and we’ll get along just
fine’. . . . I loved him very much, but I didn’t know him very well.”9 Mrs. Dodge also knew none of
the smokejumpers in Missoula, because her husband never spoke of them nor invited them home. At
Mann Gulch, Dodge did not even know the names of all the men on his crew. After the fire, Walter
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Rumsey told the Review Board, “Dodge had a characteristic in him . . . . It is hard to tell what he is
thinking.”10 In contrast, Hellman had many close friends among the smokejumpers, including Philip
McVey on the Mann Gulch crew. Well-liked by the men, he performed his duties as capably as any
second-in-command, but he seemed more like a comrade to the crew rather than a leader.
Many of the smokejumpers were young and cocky. For instance, Rumsey and Sallee described
one another as tough, backcountry boys and boasted that they were the fastest walkers on any crew.
These boys loved to carouse in local bars, and by all definitions were just that—boys. Nevertheless,
many of the crew members demonstrated great courage as they fought fires throughout the summer
of 1949.
Fire Fighting
Smokejumpers dealt mostly with small ground fires, often resulting from human error or weather
patterns (i.e., droughts and lightning). Fires spread due to terrain, wind, weather, and fuel. When
describing the conditions required for a fire to burn, experts often referred to the “fire triangle”—
flammable material, oxygen, and a temperature above ignition point.11 If any section of the fire
triangle is removed, a blaze cannot thrive. Of course, firefighters had no control over the air
temperature, wind direction, or terrain. To fight forest fires, they strove to dig a “fire line,” a trench
2–3 feet wide around the flanks of a fire. Along the line, smokejumpers scraped the ground down to
mineral soil. The fire line forced a blaze to burn onto rocks or open clearings by removing flammable
material, thereby stopping the progress of a fire or redirecting its path.
In digging a fire line, each smokejumper assumed responsibility for an adjacent area, and when he
completed his stretch, he “bumped” the next man forward by tapping his leg with a Pulaski (a tool
that was half axe and half hoe). In the words of Norman MacLean, “When Smokejumpers work next
to a regular crew of Forest Service firefighters, they take pleasure in leaving them bruised with
‘bumps’. . . . [Smokejumpers] couldn’t be touched when it came to getting a line around a fire.”12
When smokejumpers jumped onto a fire, they tried to dig a trench as quickly as possible, to
prevent the blaze from either rapidly spreading or “crowning.” A fire crowned when it reached the
tops of the trees. This could occur when spot fires—small fires that leapt from the main fire—jumped
into branches. Crowning also could occur when the fire was very hot and an oxygen rush from the
wind ignited treetops. When a blaze crowned, the line became useless, because the blaze drew upon
fuel above the trench in the ground. A crowning fire sounded like a freight train, roaring and
cracking, and producing billows of black smoke.
A crowning fire created the possibility of a blowup. Blowups occurred when the wind blew
oxygen between spot fires and the main fire, and the air between became like a convection oven,
causing the blaze to blow up and surge forward at an incredible rate.13 Not many firefighters recalled
seeing a fire blow up, because few have survived such a terrifying event. However, a few witnesses
remembered the frightening sight of an enormous, rolling wall of flame. Before the deadly blowup at
Mann Gulch, the fire moved at the swift rate of 280 feet per minute due to the high winds. Crowning
increased that rate to between 360 and 610 feet per minute. When the blowup took that rate to
between 660 and 750 feet per minute, it became very difficult to outrun the Mann Gulch fire.14
In the event of a crowning fire, one could light a “backfire” to consume flammable materials. In
short, it meant literally fighting fire with fire, by burning flammable materials in front of the main
blaze in an effort to stop its progress. This tactic entailed piling fast-burning materials in front of the
fire and waiting for the wind to blow back at the main fire, which it might never do. Backfires were
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Fire at Mann Gulch
extremely dangerous because the wind patterns needed to be just right, and stable, which they very
rarely were.
Conditions at Mann Gulch
The famous explorer Meriwether Lewis discovered Mann Gulch in 1805 in a region now known as
Gates of the Mountains in central Montana. The gulch, which was 2½ miles long, ran into the
Missouri River, and it encompassed rugged terrain. The slopes ranged from 18% uphill to 76% at
their steepest point, an area littered with loose rock through which the smokejumpers tried to climb
to escape the fire. The south side of Mann Gulch, where the fire started, was heavily timbered,
making the fire hot but slow-moving. Fires tended to travel faster uphill than down, because the
wind propelled them up the slope. Fires also moved rapidly amid lighter fuel, like grass, that burned
quickly. When the fire jumped the gulch and headed up the north side—where the terrain was drier,
grassy, and steep—it began its swift progress.15 (See Exhibits 2 and 3 for maps of Mann Gulch.)
During the summer of 1949, Montana experienced a drought, and lightning storms occurred
frequently. On August 5, the USFS put the fire potential at 74 out of a possible 100, which meant
“explosive potential.”16 The temperature in nearby Helena reached a record high that day. When the
smokejumpers parachuted into the gulch, the USFS considered the situation a Class C fire (10–99
acres). Ultimately, it became a Class F fire (300+ acres), the highest possible rating. At 3:30 pm, as the
crew approached Mann Gulch by plane, the wind blew strongly from the south at 14 to 22 miles per
hour. By 5:00 pm, after the crew landed, the wind speed increased to between 20 and 30 miles per
hour, with gusts of up to 40 miles per hour.17 Fifty-six minutes later, 12 smokejumpers had died.
The Day of the Fire
The Landing
Recreation and patrol guard Jim Harrison, a former smokejumper, reported the Mann Gulch fire
at 12:25 pm. He characterized it accurately as a small ground fire with no spot fires. A C-47 plane
departed Missoula with Dodge and his crew at 2:30 pm. (For a timeline of the events of August 5, see
Exhibit 4.) By 3:10 pm the men could see the fire from the air, which appeared to be burning
downhill on the south side of the gulch. The high winds created a great deal of turbulence on the
flight. One man became so ill that he did not make the jump; instead, he returned to Missoula, where
he resigned from the smokejumpers.
The C-47 continued to circle, while Dodge and the spotter, Earl Cooley, agreed on an adequate
landing area. Cooley had spent 10 seasons as a spotter, after personally completing nearly 50
jumps.18 The rough conditions made it difficult for Cooley and Dodge. Spotters always had the right
to refuse to drop a crew and return to base; Cooley did not exercise this right. However, instead of
dropping them above the fire, as spotters typically did, Cooley directed the crew a half mile below it
and on its flank. Judging from the air, Cooley concluded that the south side winds could be
hazardous. Dodge objected to this site at first, because a helicopter could not land for injured men—
and a foreman always thought of his crew above all else.19 In the end, Dodge conceded to Cooley’s
experience and judgment, and he gave his first order to the crew to prepare for the jump.
On average, the jump from the clouds to the ground took one minute. The parachute released
after five seconds of freefall, and if it did not, the jumpers pulled an emergency cord. Before each
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Fire at Mann Gulch
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man jumped, the assistant spotter checked their equipment and snapped their static line to the plane.
Each smokejumper usually checked his own equipment as well, since his survival depended on his
parachute and tools. The men jumped in “sticks” of 3–4, with the foreman in the first stick. The
plane unloaded all the cargo after the last man had jumped. On that afternoon, the turbulence and air
suction from the gulch became so dangerous that the plane dropped the crew from 2,000 feet instead
of the standard 1,200 feet. Dodge and his crew parachuted at 4:10 pm; the landing proved to be
extremely rough.
Only Sallee managed to break his fall, landing on a tree branch. The rest of the men rolled
dangerously through rocks and brush. Still, Dodge suffered the only injury. He cut his elbow all the
way to the bone, yet somehow it self-sealed. He bandaged it quickly and kept going. At this point,
Dodge and his crew did not appear overly concerned about the seriousness of the fire. “I took a look
at the fire and decided it wasn’t bad,” recalled Sallee. “It was burning on top the ridge and I thought
it would continue on up the ridge. I thought it probably wouldn’t burn much more that night because
it was the end of the burning period (for that day), and it looked like it would have to burn down
across a little saddle before it went uphill any more.”20
The cargo landed over a 300-square-yard area so it took the crew almost an hour to gather their
belongings; normally, the process took half that time. After locating the cargo, the crew discovered
that the radio’s parachute had not opened. Consequently, they lost their only radio. The remaining
cargo included some provisions, sleeping mats, and their precious tools—2 two-man handsaws, 2–3
shovels, and 11–12 Pulaskis—but no maps. When they left Missoula, the smokejumpers had
presumed that a ground crew working on the fire could provide area maps. Unfortunately, this
belief turned out to be incorrect. By 5:00 pm the crew had collected the cargo, minus a radio and
maps, when they heard a shout from near the fire.
Marching to the Fire
At this point Dodge gave his second order, telling Hellman to make sure the men ate and filled
their canteens while he checked out the source of the shouting. Dodge left the crew behind, who by
5:10 pm had eaten dinner quickly, tooled up, and pronounced themselves ready to go. Meanwhile,
Dodge performed reconnaissance. Hellman led the crew a quarter mile down the gulch to loosen up,
then up the south side 100 yards toward the fire. Then they met Dodge, along with Harrison, the
shouter. Harrison had been digging a trench alone since the time he reported the fire. Dodge
discovered Harrison in a thick-timbered area, and he pulled him immediately out of that terrain and
back to the crew. At 5:20 pm, Dodge communicated directly to his men for the first time since they
had landed, warning them to get out of the thick forest because it was a “death trap.” Rumsey and
Sallee did not remember Dodge looking worried at this point. That impression did not change when
Dodge and Harrison hiked back to the cargo area to eat, leaving the crew a second time.
Dodge ordered Hellman not to go to the gulch bottom, but to cross the gulch and stay on a side
hill. He wanted the crew to maintain an elevation where they could see the fire while they worked
their way toward the river. Dodge hoped to employ the river as a potential escape route—the typical
plan when approaching a fire. Dodge wanted to dig a trench on the fire’s flank in an effort to steer
and contain it, while keeping the river at his crew’s back. In his mind, Dodge believed that if
anything went wrong, the river could save his crew—as long as the fire did not block the route.
Twenty minutes later, the crew became separated and confused. While ostensibly being led by
Hellman, the unit became split into two marching groups, roughly 500 feet apart from each other. No
one appeared to be in charge of either group, let alone the crew as a whole. At one point, Rumsey
remembered David Navon, a former paratrooper, taking the lead. He began to exercise control,
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Fire at Mann Gulch
apparently concluding that the outfit needed more leadership than Hellman had been providing.
Hellman was a competent squad leader and second-in-command, whose usual duties were to bring
up the rear of the marching line, making sure that all the smokejumpers understood and followed the
foreman’s orders. He had little experience with the responsibilities of a foreman—making decisions,
giving orders, setting the pace, picking the trail, and always being aware of an escape route. The crew
respected and liked Hellman, but he had trouble keeping everyone moving together at a steady pace.
Meanwhile, by the time Dodge had reached the cargo area to eat, his unease with the fire began to
mount. Therefore, he grabbed a can of Irish potatoes and hurried back to the crew. Dodge used
precious time to reorganize the group. By 5:40 pm, Dodge and Hellman had collected the scattered
men and assumed their usual positions in the lead and rear of the pack respectively. Only Dodge
found the fire troubling at this point; Navon even took time to snap a few photographs of the
miraculous spectacle in front of the crew. The crew continued to march a quarter mile toward the
river, before Dodge saw the fire cross the gulch and head up the northern slope.
The Race
Being in the lead, only Dodge saw the fire rush straight toward the crew, blocking the escape
route to the river. He gave the order immediately to turn around and run. Rumsey and Sallee did
not recall experiencing panic, but they felt the urgency to sprint to safety at the top of the ridge. The
north side’s grassy terrain, as well as the uphill movement of the fire, surely served as a warning to
Dodge that this blaze would move quickly.
At 5:53 pm, with the fire hot on the crew’s heels, Dodge ordered the men to drop their tools.
Surprisingly, he found that some smokejumpers already had discarded their tools; others did not
heed his order. Sallee remembered, “By the time we dropped our packs and tools, the fire was
probably not much over a hundred yards behind us, and it seemed to me that it was getting ahead of
us both above and below.”21 As the fire raged around the men, Dodge again yelled that this was a
death trap. He estimated that the top of the ridge stood roughly 200 yards away. Given the 76%
rocky incline, Dodge concluded immediately that they could not outrun the rapidly approaching fire.
He bent down and lit an “escape fire” in the grass with a match. Then, Dodge placed a handkerchief
over his mouth and lay down in the smoldering ashes.
Dodge’s Escape Fire
Dodge later testified to the Review Board that he had never heard of the concept of an escape fire
prior to Mann Gulch. He simply felt that the idea seemed logical given the situation at the time.22
Intriguingly, however, James Fenimore Cooper wrote of something similar to an escape fire in his
1827 novel The Prairie. In addition, historians have since learned that Native Americans discovered
the concept of an escape fire in the early 1800s.23 Nevertheless, no one at Mann Gulch appeared to be
familiar with the tactic.
In 1949 the USFS guidelines for handling a fire emergency did not include any reference to the
idea of an escape fire. The guidelines were as follows:
1.
Light a backfire if there is time and the right situation (of which there were neither in the case
of Mann Gulch).
2.
Get to the top of a ridge where the fuel is thinner; there are more rocks, and wind fluctuates.
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Fire at Mann Gulch
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3.
If you can neither light a backfire nor get to a ridge top, try to work through a fire by moving
into burned-out areas.
4.
Whatever you do, do not let the fire pick the place where it hits you.24
Interestingly, Dodge’s actions adhered to three of the four principles outlined above. One analyst
wrote, “The escape fire is lit near the top of the ridge, Dodge turns into the main fire and works
through it by burning a hole in it, and he chooses where the fire hits him.”25 However, Dodge’s
invention, while it seemed similar to the concept of a backfire, differed in a very important way.
Smokejumpers lit backfires to clear an area of vegetation, thereby depriving the main fire of fuel. In
so doing, they hoped that, with the winds blowing in the proper direction, the backfire would stop
the progress of the main fire and redirect its path away from them. With the main fire stymied for a
moment, the firefighters could flee. However, Dodge did not light his fire to stop the progress of the
main blaze. Instead, he hoped to create a very small area, free of grassy fuel, in which he could take
refuge for a brief period of time. Later, Dodge explained to the Review Board that “with less than a
minute remaining until he was engulfed by flames, a backfire would not have cleared enough grass
to stop anything.”26
The Crew’s Reaction
When Dodge lit the escape fire, his crew did not understand what he was trying to accomplish.
He pointed to his fire and yelled to them, “This way! This way!” Imagine what the smokejumpers
thought as they watched Dodge pull out his tiny matchbook, a raging fire directly behind him. Sallee
described his impression at the time: “I thought, with the fire almost on our back, what the hell is the
boss doing lighting another fire in front of us?”27 Rumsey said, “I remember thinking that that was a
very good idea, but I don’t remember what I thought it was good for. . . . I kept thinking the ridge—if
I can make it. On the ridge I will be safe.”28
Sallee remembered thinking that perhaps Dodge was trying to slow the fire down. Still, with the
ridge so close, and the fire raging on their heels, Dodge’s actions didn’t seem to make sense to him.
“By that time the fire was right behind us. It sounded like a freight train or a jet airplane. It was a
tremendous roar,” said Sallee. “I personally didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing. In fact, I
thought maybe he’d lost it, because it didn’t make sense to me.”29
Rumsey supposed that it might be a buffer fire to protect them as they raced for the ridge.
Although Dodge insisted later he was yelling at the crew to join him, Rumsey reported, “I did not
hear him say anything. There was a terrible roar from the main fire. Couldn’t hear much.”30 The
crew did see Dodge waving for them to run toward him. With no knowledge of the basis for an
escape fire, many crew members discounted Dodge’s actions as a waste of precious time while they
were running for their lives. Given only a matter of seconds to make their decision, the
smokejumpers did not understand the rationale for Dodge’s instruction, and no one joined him lying
down on the scorched terrain of that steep slope.
As the crew raced toward the top of the ridge, Dodge remembered hearing one voice respond to
his frantic shouts. A crew member, probably Hellman, screamed to the others, “To hell with that!
I’m getting out of here!”31 Everyone ran past Dodge, passing within 20–50 feet of him. Rumsey and
Sallee headed straight up the steep incline. Hellman attempted a different route and traversed the
slope’s side. Rumsey and Sallee found their way through a rock crevice along the ridge. The two
roommates discovered a safe haven in a rocky area, and they survived the fire. Hellman made it
over the ridge, but he became burned quite badly and died the next day. Eleven other smokejumpers
and Harrison perished as well.
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Fire at Mann Gulch
Dodge lit the escape fire at 5:55 pm, and a burned watch from Harrison’s body stopped at 5:56pm,
indicating the time of the blowup. At 6:10 pm, Dodge sat up from his burned patch, after having the
fire blow right over him, and he began to search for other survivors. Had the others followed him
into his ingenious escape, they too would have lived.
Later, some family members of the victims argued that the blowup did not cause the deaths, but
rather that Dodge’s fire burned the men. The Board of Review determined otherwise. They found
“no evidence of disregard by [Dodge].” Moreover, the board members concluded that the crew
members would have survived if they had “heeded Dodge’s efforts to get them to go into the escape
fire area.”32 A USFS report concluded, “Dodge sized up the situation better than most of his crew,
who either thought they could outrun the fire or saw no other alternative.” Several families brought
suit against the USFS, arguing that the crew should not have jumped at all that day, but they lost
their case in the U.S. Court of Appeals.33
Theories
Why did this tragedy occur? Multiple theories abound. After researching the fatal episode, one
writer concluded that it was “a race the firefighters could not win.”34 In his book, MacLean proposed
that the tragedy probably resulted from a series of “little screw-ups that fitted together tighter and
tighter until all became one and the same thing—the fateful blowup.”35 In contrast, some critics
faulted Dodge’s leadership before and during the crisis:
Leadership is a product of both today’s actions and yesterday’s groundwork. The fatal
combination that emerged in Mann Gulch was partly what Dodge did or did not do on
August 5, but also what he did or did not do well before the smokejumpers ever climbed
aboard the aircraft. . . . Enabling all to make informed decisions, informing all to understand
your decisions, and organizing all to discipline their decisions are among the enduring
legacies of Wagner Dodge's fifty-six minute struggle for survival in Mann Gulch.36
Others argued that the crew lacked the training and the composure under duress to react
appropriately to Dodge’s escape fire. These experts cited findings from a study of decision-making
under stress by urban firefighters. The researchers concluded that “the performance of experienced
officers improves under high uncertainty and stress, while the performance of inexperienced officers
declines.” Some students of the Mann Gulch tragedy also likened the crew’s reaction to the panic
that sometimes afflicts military units. They cited Freud’s commentary on panic by soldiers engaged
in armed conflict:
A panic arises if a group of that kind [military] becomes disintegrated. Its characteristics
are that none of the orders given by superiors are any longer listened to, and that each
individual is only solicitous on his own account, and without any consideration for the rest.
The mutual ties have ceased to exist, and a gigantic and senseless fear is set free.37
When he testified before the Review Board, Dodge acknowledged that his crew lacked experience
with fire emergencies. He said, “I doubt if any of them have ever been in any conditions that
required any action to save their lives, and practically all being young fellows. . . . I don’t think they
have ever been up against a critical situation.”38
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Firefighting Today
The fire at Mann Gulch became a historic moment for the Forest Service. It took 450 men, working
for five long days, to bring the Mann Gulch fire under control. It eventually burned 4,500 acres of
Montana’s forest, an area covering nearly eight square miles.
When Maclean published his book about the fire in 1992, he noted, “The fact that the
Smokejumpers have suffered no fatality from fire since Mann Gulch suggests they have learned some
things from it.”39 Nearly 50 years after Mann Gulch, the fire coordinator at the regional Forest
Service headquarters in Missoula insisted that its lessons still resonate. “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 to firefighter’s safety,” he said. “That’s where we started developing protective
equipment for people, better tools . . . also kind of a national mobilization toward establishing fire
line safe practices.”40
After Mann Gulch, the USFS developed 10 Standard Firefighting Orders (Exhibit 5), and it placed
more emphasis on firefighter safety. Crews began to bring backup radios, wear hardhats and fireresistant clothing, and carry aluminum fire shelters. Their training improved as well with additional
physical conditioning and more education on the science of fire behavior. The training emphasized
the need for smokejumpers to follow the orders of their superiors.
The USFS informed each
smokejumper that they would be relieved of duty if they disregarded an order.
Over the years, the USFS continued to try to educate young, courageous smokejumpers about the
serious risks involved in fighting forest fires. Still, they remained a highly self-confident bunch. In
an interview with Outside magazine in 1995, Sallee said:
The problem today is that when you teach people to fight fire, they go into it expecting to
win. If a tree flares up and singes your whiskers, you don’t think much about it—you just
hurry a little faster. If a tree falls, it’s an adrenaline rush, and then you go about your
business. What we forget is that this is all deadly stuff.41
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Fire at Mann Gulch
Exhibit 1
The Mann Gulch Crew
Name
Position
Age
Experience
Wagner Dodge
Foreman
33
! Smokejumper foreman since 1945
! Smokejumper since 1940
Bill Hellman
Squad
leader
24
! 3rd season as a smokejumper
! 4 years in Navy and Marines
Joe Sylvia
Crew
24
! 2nd season as a smokejumper
! 3 years in Marines
Robert Sallee
Crew
17.
! 1st season as a smokejumper
! Mann Gulch was his first jump
Walter Rumsey
Crew
21
! 1st season as a smokejumper
! Mann Gulch was his first jump
Silas Thompson
Crew
21
! 2nd season as a smokejumper
! Served in Japan as Army paratrooper
Henry Thol, Jr.
Crew
19
! 2nd summer with USFS
! 1st season as a smokejumper
Marvin Sherman
Crew
21
! 3rd season with USFS
! 1st season as a smokejumper
! Navy veteran
Newton Thompson
Crew
23
! 2nd season with USFS
! 1st season as a smokejumper
Stanley Reba
Crew
26
! 2nd season as a smokejumper
! Army veteran; awarded Purple Heart
Leonard Piper
Crew
23
! 1st season as a smokejumper
! WWII veteran (US Navy)
David Navon
Crew
28
! 1st season as a smokejumper
! Five years in US Army
Philip McVey
Crew
22
! 5th season with USFS
! 2nd season as a smokejumper
Eldon Diettert
Crew
19
! 1st season as a smokejumper
Robert Bennett
Crew
22
! 1st season as a smokejumper
! Served in US Army for one year
Sources: Adapted from Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1972);
<www.smokejumpers.com/in_memoriam/their_stories.php>, accessed July 16, 2003; and <http://formontana.net/
gulch 14.html>, accessed August 19, 2003.
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Fire at Mann Gulch
Exhibit 2
Source:
304-089
Routes Taken by Fire and Crew
Michael Useem, The Leadership Moment: Nine Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All, p. 48.
Copyright © 1998 by Michael Useem. Used by permission of Times Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
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Fire at Mann Gulch
Exhibit 3
Map of Mann Gulch
Pt. 1
Fire
@ 3 pm
X.
Pt. 2
Pt. 3
Pt. 1: Landing Zone.
Pt. 3: Turnaround point.
Pt. 2: Dodge and Harrison meet crew.
X: Dodge’s escape fire.
Source:
Adapted by casewriter from Richard C. Rothermel, Mann Gulch Fire: A Race that Couldn’t Be Won, United States
Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station, General Technical Report INT-299, May
1993.
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Fire at Mann Gulch
Exhibit 4
304-089
Chronology
12:35 pm
Harrison reported the fire.
2:30 pm
Plane left smokejumper base in Missoula, MT.
3:10 pm
Fire first spotted from plane. Dodge and Cooley looked for landing place; C-47
circled several times. Bad turbulence.
4:10 pm
Crew and cargo dropped.
5:00 pm
All cargo retrieved. Discovered that radio was destroyed. Crew heard a shout.
Dodge told Hellman to make sure men ate and filled canteens while he checked out
the source of the shout. Winds between 20 and 30mph with gusts of up to 40mph.
5:10 pm
Crew tooled up and left cargo area. Walked a quarter mile down gulch, climbed 100
yards toward the fire when they met Dodge, who told them to stop—it was a death
trap.
5:20 pm
Dodge gave Hellman the order to follow contour of fire. Dodge and Harrison hiked
to cargo area to eat.
5:40 pm
Dodge and Harrison rejoined the crew. Crew with Hellman was confused and
separated. Hellman and Dodge collected crew, marched with Dodge in lead and
Hellman in rear.
5:45 pm
Marched a quarter mile down gulch, Dodge saw fire cross Mann Gulch and come up
toward them. Crew reversed direction. Dodge estimated a 150–200 yard headstart
on fire.
5:53 pm
Dodge ordered crew to drop tools. Again, he told crew it was a death trap.
5:55 pm
Dodge realized they wouldn’t make it to the top of ridge. He lit an escape fire. No
one followed him. Crew desperately raced to top.
5:56 pm
Men caught in blowup. Sallee and Rumsey found crevice. Hellman reached top of
ridge, badly burned.
6:10 pm
Fire passed, Dodge got up and found Sallee, Rumsey, Sylvia and Hellman (the latter
two were severely burned and eventually died).
Source:
Developed by casewriter from narrative in Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire (Chicago, IL: Chicago University
Press, 1972), pp. 39–106.
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Fire at Mann Gulch
Exhibit 5
Standard Firefighting Orders
United States Forest Service’s Standard Firefighting Orders
1.
FIRE WEATHER. Keep informed of fire weather conditions and predictions.
2.
INSTRUCTIONS. Know exactly what my instructions are and follow them at all times.
3.
RIGHT THINGS FIRST. Identify the key points of my assignment and take action in order of
priority.
4.
ESCAPE PLAN. Have an escape plan in mind and direct subordinates in event of a blow-up.
5.
SCOUTING. Thoroughly scout the fire areas for which I am responsible.
6.
COMMUNICATION. Establish and maintain regular communication with adjoining forces,
subordinates, and superior officers.
7.
ALERTNESS. Quickly recognize changed conditions and immediately revise plans to handle.
8.
LOOKOUT. Post a lookout for every possible dangerous situation.
9.
DISCIPLINE. Establish and maintain control of all men under my supervision and at all times
know where they are and what they are doing.
10. SUPERVISION. Be sure that the men I commit to any fire job have clear instructions and
adequate overhead.
Source: Adapted from Norman Maclean, Young Men and Fire (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 221–222.
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304-089
Endnotes
1
Richard C. Rothermel, Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn’t Be Won, United States Dept. of Agriculture,
Forest Service, Intermountain Research Center, General Technical Report INT-299, May 1993.
2 Norman
Maclean, Young Men and Fire (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 31–32.
3 Ibid.,
p. 28.
4 Ibid.,
pp. 19–20.
5 “Smokejumpers
Suffer Ordeal by Fire,” Life (August 1949), 17–19.
6
Reported in the Board of Review transcripts, <wildfirelessons.net/Library/Incident_Reviews/Fatalities/
Mann_Gulch_Board_of_Review.pdf>, (accessed August 19, 2003), p. 69.
7
Smokejumper website, www.smokejumpers.com/in_memoriam/their_stories.php, (accessed July 16, 2003).
8
Michael Useem, The Leadership Moment: Nine Stories of Triumph and Disaster and Their Lessons for Us All
(New York, NY: Times Business, 1998), p. 48.
9
Maclean, p. 40.
10
Ibid., p. 64.
11
Ibid., p. 35.
12 Ibid.,
13
p. 61.
Ibid., pp. 34–36.
14 Rothermel,
pp. 5–6.
15
Ibid., pp. 4–5.
16
Maclean, p. 79.
17 Rothermel,
18 Board
19
p. 2.
of Review transcripts, p. 58.
Maclean, p. 49.
20 Rothermel,
p. 2.
21
Ibid., p. 71.
22
Ibid., pp. 104–105.
23
Useem, p. 57; Karl E. Weick, “The Collapse of Sensemaking in Organizations: The Mann Gulch Disaster,”
Administrative Science Quarterly, Ithaca, NY, December 1993, p. 639.
24
Ibid., p. 100.
25
Weick, p. 639.
26
Useem, p. 51.
27
Ibid., p 74.
28
Ibid., p 74.
29
PBS Web site, from “Fire Wars,” <www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2908_fire.html>, accessed
August 19, 2003.
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Fire at Mann Gulch
30
Ibid., p. 96.
31
Ibid., p. 94.
32 Ibid.,
p.151.
33 Ibid.,
p. 151.
34
Rothermel, p. 7.
35 Maclean,
p. 92.
36
Useem, pp. 53–64.
37
Weick, p. 637.
38
Board of Review transcripts, p. 122.
39
Ibid., p. 217.
40 Firehouse
Web site, <www.firehouse.com/wildfires/1999/0801a.html>, accessed August 19, 2003.
41Outside Magazine Web site, <http://web.outsideonline.com/magazine/0995/9f_torc1.html>, accessed
August 19, 2003.
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