The deaths of 14 firefighters on Colorado's Storm King Mountain in 1994 reawakened public awareness about wildfire dangers. Now, with wildfires taking hundreds of homes, those concerns are once again front and center out West.
And no doubt, that is attracting the attention of a most notable writer.
Long before he became the best-selling author of The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger was captivated by the daring efforts of men and women who take on these runaway blazes. Whenever Sebastian comes by my studio we talk about writing, chess, his latest travels and inevitably, fire.
Sebastian Junger: I was on an enormous fire in Idaho in '92. And back then, I didn't really have any credentials as a journalist. I was working as a climber for tree companies, and to make more money, I was writing a little bit, getting [stories] published in local newspapers.
Tom Foreman: But you wanted to see a wildland fire?
Sebastian Junger: I wanted to write a book about dangerous jobs and this was the first one I came up with: fighting wildfires. And I just went out West and talked my way into a fire camp and watched these guys fight fire. And, as a job, it was everything. If I could have switched from being a journalist to being a smokejumper, right then I would have done it and never looked back. I just thought, "This job has everything a man could ever want."
Tom Foreman: Let me ask you a bit about that. I've spent a lot of time on fire lines over the years as a journalist, and there are moments of intense drama when the fire's coming, but there are also unending hours of tedium and waiting and digging trenches.
Sebastian Junger: Yeah. I mean, I'm sure eventually if I had gotten my dream job, I would have found some dissatisfaction in it. But there was something about the fact that these groups of 20, mostly men, are out in the mountains fighting something as sort of primal and ancient as fire. And it's not war. I mean, war is so ugly, you know, but it has all the drama of war without that ugliness. God, what other job tests you like that?
Tom Foreman: You wrote about Storm King Mountain where the 14 young firefighters died in that sudden burst of flame up that hillside. How did that strike you?
Sebastian Junger: I was out at Storm King a couple of days after the tragedy.
Tom Foreman: You and I were likely there together because I was covering it at the same time.
Sebastian Junger: Yeah, that's right.
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