Megafire : the race to extinguish a deadly epidemic of flame /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

As forest fires continue to ravage communities, this bestselling author and firefighter explores what causes them, and captures the danger and heroism of those who fight them



In Megafire, a world-renowned journalist and forest fire expert travels to the most dangerous and remote wildernesses, as well as to the backyards of people faced with these environmental disasters, to look at the heart of this phenomenon and witness firsthand the heroic efforts of the firefighters and scientists racing against time to stop it--or at least to tame these deadly flames.



From Colorado to California, China to Canada, the narrative hopscotches the globe and takes readers to the frontlines of the battle both on the ground and in the air, and in the laboratories, universities, and federal agencies where this issue rages on. Through this prism of perspectives, Kodas zeroes in on a handful of the most terrifying and tumultuous of these environmental disasters in recent years--the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona that took the lives of nineteen elite "hotshot" firefighters, the Waldo Canyon Fire that overwhelmed the city of Colorado Springs--and more in a page-turning narrative that puts a face on the brave people at the heart of this issue. Megafire describes the profound impact of these fires around the earth and will change the way we think about the environment and the essential precariousness of our world.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Prologue (p. ix)
• Part I Everybody's Hometown
• 1 Yarnell Hill (p. 3)
• 2 Fuses and Bombs (p. 12)
• 3 Prescott (p. 21)
• Part II Our Greatest Ally, Due Fiercest Foe
• 4 Heartstrong (p. 27)
• 5 Red Buffalo, Black Dragon (p. 40)
• 6 Crazy Woman (p. 49)
• 7 The Bigger Blowup (p. 56)
• Part III The Crowded Forest
• 8 Mansions in the Slums (p. 61)
• 9 The Blackline (p. 71)
• 10 Slop-Over (p. 75)
• 11 Off to the Races (p. 87)
• 12 Red Zones (p. 100)
• Part IV Turning Up the Heat
• 13 Playing with Fire (p. 115)
• 14 Nuclear Frying Pan (p. 118)
• 15 The Vanishing Forest (p. 128)
• 16 The Fire-Industrial Complex (p. 136)
• 17 High Park (p. 145)
• 18 Firebugs (p. 157)
• 19 Forest Jihad (p. 170)
• Part V Extended Attack
• 20 Mountain Shadows (p. 177)
• 21 Firestorm (p. 186)
• 22 Seeing Red (p. 201)
• 23 Never Winter (p. 223)
• 24 Black Forest (p. 228)
• 25 Trickle Down (p. 235)
• Part VI Backfire
• 26 Frontier Days (p. 245)
• 27 Defusing the Time Bomb (p. 251)
• 28 The Doce (p. 266)
• 29 Where the Desert Breeze Meets the Mountain Air (p. 272)
• 30 The Perfect Firestorm (p. 275)
• 31 Trigger Points (p. 286)
• 32 Nineteen (p. 289)
• 33 Blowback (p. 296)
• Epilogue (p. 310)
• Acknowledgments (p. 317)
• Notes (p. 321)
• Index (p. 350)

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

PROLOGUE   The Fourmile Canyon Fire broke out on Labor Day 2010, while my wife and I were moving into a cottage in the Colorado Chautauqua, a National Historic Landmark and park overlooking Boulder. Our home for the year at the foot of the Flatirons ​-- ​pinnacles of red rock that define the city's skyline ​-- ​carries a rugged, rustic status. The historic dining hall and auditorium 100 yards below our cottage hosted Teddy Roosevelt a century before we moved to the park and bands such as Los Lobos after we arrived. At night we listened to the concerts from the easy chairs on the cottage's front porch while staring at the lights of the city sprawling below a forest of stars. In the morning we looked out on hot air balloons ascending in the sunrise. On game days we could see the crowds and hear the cheers in the stands of the University of Colorado's football stadium. The panorama of dark mountain forests descending to the glowing city highlighted what made Boulder County one of the fastest growing counties in the West. The cottage's interior was as rough-hewn as the Rockies. Ancient knob-and-tube electrical wiring drooped from the ceilings. A cockeyed brass chandelier seemed like it might burst into flame if you looked at it wrong. The windows sat off kilter in their sills. Stinkbugs and box elder beetles didn't even have to slow down to fly inside through the gaps. Sunlight beamed between the slats into the dim, dusty interior. Between the wiring, the wood, and the trees surrounding the cabin, our new life seemed almost designed to burn, but the charm of the location all but blinded us to that. We raved about the delicious apples that fell from the tree overhanging the front gardens, but never discussed the fire hazard posed by the pine needles that piled up in the corners of the roof and the century-old clapboards. As we unloaded our boxes, we heard the first planes and choppers buzz over our heads on their way to the wildfire that was already devouring homes. We listened to a police scanner on a laptop and wondered how quickly the ancient wooden cabin would ignite if a firebrand landed on it. I quit unpacking and climbed to the top of the First Flatiron. From there, more than 1,000 feet above our new home, I could see the column of smoke rising five miles away. On the shoulder of Flagstaff Mountain, farther west, I joined nearly 100 other Boulder residents looking out on the flames spreading over Sunshine Canyon and Sugarloaf Mountain. The vista was similar to the one I had over the city from my porch, but the scene wasn't nearly so idyllic. Instead of balloons in the sunrise, we watched air tankers paint red crescents in the sky just above the flaming pines. We could see some of the more palatial homes in the canyons and watched as the fire worked its way among them. The houses didn't explode, but gradually showed a tiny bit of red around their bases or on their roofs. "That one's going up," someone would shout as soon as they saw the slightest glow. Sometimes the houses burned fast, but usually it took 30 minutes or more for them to become fully engulfed. Despite covering dozens of wildfires, and fighting them over a summer, this was the first one I saw destroy people's homes. The Fourmile Canyon Fire burned 169 residences and was the first of four fires in four years that would break the "most destructive" fire record in Colorado. While it never threatened Chautauqua or our cottage, it did burn away many of the ideas I had about wildfire. The houses of Fourmile Canyon would be rebuilt long before I filled those voids in my understanding. Five years later a fire more than a thousand miles away hit even closer to home. In Lake County, California, my brother Jeff was living in a cabin similar to our onetime home in Chautauqua. During the height of the summer of 2015 the Rocky and Jerusalem Fires burned within a dozen miles of Jeff's cabin. Then, in September, the Valley Fire burned 76,067 acres through the mountains where he lived. "We'd been seeing it all summer," he told me when I called. "I saw the smoke over here and thought, 'Oh, shit, here we go again.' " As the blaze came toward his cabin, Jeff found that his truck wouldn't start. He was left with a tiny, two-door sports car to carry anything he wanted to save and raced away with his girlfriend's paintings and silk screens, some jewels and gold, a few tools, and two cats (one would escape his grasp while he searched for a shelter and perish in the flames). During the following days he did what he could to help others who were evacuating ​-- ​gathering pets, turning off electricity, and leading a disabled friend away from the fire. Eventually he found himself alone on a ridgeline, where he watched the panorama of fire. "I could see for miles ​-- ​almost all the way to the East Bay," Jeff, an unflappable marine veteran who served in Vietnam, said. "It was like that mountain got napalmed and rocketed all at once." By then he was certain that his own home had burned. "Going back out the last time was like driving out through the apocalypse," he said. "Whole neighborhoods have just vanished. They're gone." By the time my niece and her mother, who live in nearby Cobb, gathered their pets and some valuables, the flames surrounding the town were so thick that they couldn't drive through them. They parked on a golf course, where treeless greens, water hazards, and sand traps provided a refuge in the orange night. Their home survived, but many of the ones around it, and most of nearby Middletown, burned. They couldn't return home for weeks. The Valley Fire burned more than 1,300 homes and killed four residents,1 one of them an acquaintance of my brother's. It also climaxed the year in which the most land on record in the United States ​-- ​10 million acres ​-- ​burned in wildfires.2 I covered my first forest fire nearly 30 years before the Valley Fire burned my brother's home. I fought fires in the Rocky Mountains a decade before the Fourmile Canyon Fire blazed outside Boulder. But the new fires were different from the ones I'd photographed, reported on, and fought years before. Some scientists and firefighters were calling the worst of them "megafires," but others bristled at the term's sensationalism and lack of scientific precision. During the five years between the fire outside my hometown, which began the series of record-breaking fires in Colorado, and the one that burned down my brother's cabin and topped off a year in which the most acreage in the nation burned, I tried to learn what was driving fires to be so much larger, faster, hotter, and more destructive. It seemed like that question would be easy to answer, particularly with the world's first conference studying megafires announced soon after the fire that threatened Boulder. But just defining "megafire" proved more difficult than I'd anticipated. Excerpted from Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame by Michael Kodas All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Kodas (High Crimes) investigates the rise of "megafires" in the western United States and throughout the world. Unlike their predecessors, these forest and brush fires are so named because of their sheer scale, high intensity, and large swaths of destruction. Using recent fires in Arizona and Colorado as exemplars of the phenomenon, Kodas looks at the complex interplay of factors that have led to the outbreak of such disasters within the past few decades and their impact on families in the area who live through them as well as the firefighters battling the blazes. Kodas applies personal interviews, on-site reporting, and extensive research to weave a cautionary tale and investigative analysis of megafires and their effects on a community. The author also looks at important issues of economics, politics, human behavior, and nature itself, which all weigh heavily on the occurrence of this destructive force. -VERDICT This is a story that anyone who lives in a fire-prone state or who is thinking of moving to one should read. A much-needed book on a highly pertinent topic.-Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Journalist Kodas addresses the increasing destructiveness of forest fires, a topic gaining in significance as the climate warms. Initially he takes a traditional approach, immersing readers in stories of tragic fires in Colorado and Arizona as he recounts efforts to save lives and property that all too often are unsuccessful. However, as he reaches deeper into our national history of firefighting and the whole notion that forest fires must be fought at all costs, he reveals a cultural mindset that defies science, a deification of the firefighting profession that makes effective investigations nearly impossible, and an attitude about real-estate development in wooded areas that is foolhardy if not willfully ignorant. Grounding his investigation in personal stories, Kodas turns this exploration of the fire-industrial complex into a surprising page-turner. Always respectful of the lives lost fighting fire, the author never loses sight of the bigger picture: the fires aren't going away, and current approaches to addressing that fact are based on antiquated ideas. This is a must-read for all as forest fires spread across the country.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2017 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

How we have mismanaged fire over the last centuryand the costs we're paying.Around the world, writes award-winning journalist and photographer Kodas (Environmental Journalism/Univ. of Colorado; High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed, 2008, etc.), "megafires" are billowing each fire season, thanks to a perfect storm of related causes: climate change is making forests drier, beetles and other pests are making kindling of vast stretches of woodland, and "booming development[has] filled forests with human-produced sparks and heat," to name just a few. Those vast fires flourish because of a miscalculated fire regimenfirst trying to "extinguish every wildfire in the country," thereby allowing a vast inventory of flammable materials to build up, then introducing controlled burns that too often get out of control. In this country, the result is the projected annual burning, by midcentury, of an area the size of Maine. Trained as a forest firefighter, Kodas notes that he "didn't anticipate that schooling would be as much in economics and politics as it was in fuels and fire weather," since both politics and economics dominate decisions about fires and their aftermath. A case in point that he covers in depth is the Yarnell Hill Fire of 2013, in which 19 Arizona firefighters died; that story has been well-treated elsewhere, but Kodas brings new insight to the events and especially the legal wrangles that followed the blaze. More are likely to die, civilians and firefighters alike. The costs, as the author chronicles, are not just in terms of human lives, but also billions of dollars in property damage and economic lossto say nothing of the costs states and municipalities must now shoulder as the federal government backs away from paying for firefighting. As Kodas dourly notes, Congress continues to block more funding even as the death count climbs. Worthy of shelving alongside the best of modern firefighting booksand of the broadest audience, especially in territories where fires are likely to rage. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

MICHAEL KODAS is the associate director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder, an award-winning photojournalist and reporter, and author of the best-selling book High Crimes: The Fate of Everest in an Age of Greed . He lives in Boulder, Colorado.