Moral Courage - Stories from the Fireline

 

The horrifying tangle of bodies and fire shelters on the side of Storm King Mountain after the afternoon blowup spoke of chaos and desperation—an attempted escape gone terribly wrong.

At sunset on July 6, 1994, just hours after the blowup, a smokejumper in the rescue party surveyed the grim tragedy, stunned by the enormity of what had just occurred. As he dejectedly contemplated the position of the bodies and the tattered fire shelters, he began to have a growing conviction: the hillside, with evidence of the last struggles of 14 firefighters, had a critical story to tell.

His initial impulse was to do whatever it took to remove the bodies as a sign of respect, but as the smokejumper weighed the competing values, he realized that the site must be preserved, to learn lessons from those who had died there that day.

Late that night the smokejumper had made his way down to the incident command post, where fire supervisors were buzzing with plans to immediately remove the bodies. Realizing what was about to happen, the smokejumper interrupted:

“Listen, here’s the deal. You move those bodies and you are going to ruin every bit of information those investigators can get. What happened up there was unusual, and it would be foolhardy to destroy that scene.”

One of the fire supervisors shrugged him off saying, “Well, the governor wants those bodies off the hill tonight.”

“Well, [expletive] the governor!” the smokejumper said.

At that moment, the governor turned and cut into their conversation, “Is there a problem here?”

Without skipping a beat, the smokejumper continued, “Governor, be sure not to let them disturb that scene until there has been a very thorough mapping of what occurred. Because, in spite of the tragedy, we must learn from this event. And there is much to be learned.”

The governor heeded the smokejumper’s impassioned plea and instructed the fire supervisors to leave undisturbed the bodies of those who had fallen.

The resulting accident investigation report would have told an entirely different story if the smokejumper had not thought through that difficult decision and spoken out at that decisive moment. Instead, the report is one of the most detailed accounts of a firefighting tragedy and has had a lasting effect on the wildland fire service.

[Click here to download a copy of Leading in the Wildland Fire Service.]