When the storm had passed, a tiny wisp of smoke drifted into the air over Storm King Mountain, just west of Glenwood Springs. The storm and that wisp of smoke set into motion a series of seemingly insignificant decisions and small mistakes that four days later would cost 14 highly trained firefighters their lives in one of the worst disasters in wildland firefighting history. Their deaths and the events that led to them were startingly reminiscent of the Mann Gulch fire that killed 13 firefighters 45 years before in Montana. The book answers many of the questions and supplies previously unknown details about the events that started with that July 2 lightning storm and still reverberate through the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and firefighting units everywhere. From an explanation of how the blaze, which burned on Storm King Mountain, came to be incorrectly named the South Canyon Fire to how the investigation into the tragedy was doomed from the beginning, Maclean weaves a riveting tale that gradually builds to the horror of July 6, when the fire, pushed by 50-mph winds, chased the firefighters up a steep slope and overtook them.
Every page is full of details - in some places too full.
Once in awhile the book bogs down in minutiae, and readers will find themselves skimming. Maclean has also done a masterful job of showing the chaos of underfunded, undermanned government agencies struggling to make their best guesses as to where best to deploy their resources as well as detailing the breakdowns in communication that contributed to the tragedy. The accounts of inter-agency rivalries that contributed to the deaths are also illuminating. He's made each player in the drama a real person. By the time you turn the final page you'll intimately know the people who died, how they lived their lives and what they went through in their final moments.