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Raging Fire Season Highlights Human Cost of Firefighting
Posted by Climate Central: Michael Kodas on September 2nd, 2012
Climate Central: Earlier this month, a 20-year-old digging a fire line in the Idaho mountains was killed by a falling tree, making her the 12th person to die in forest firefighting operations around the country this year. When I attended her funeral a few days later, nearly 300 of her fellow U.S. Forest Service firefighters lined up outside Moscow, Idaho's, Church of the Nazarene in their flame-retardant work gear -- shirts the color of sunflowers tucked into rugged, jade-green pants -- and watched bagpipers and...
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Climate Change Fuels the Perfect Firestorm
Posted by Climate Central: Michael Kodas on July 15th, 2012
Climate Central: The last time I chased wildfires across Colorado was in 2003, while serving as a seasonal wildland firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service. I was part of a crew of 20, bouncing through the Rocky Mountains in a battered school bus to put out fires with names like Crazy Woman and the Bluebird. It was a war fought with rakes, spades, axes, and chainsaws, in which I extinguished more flames with shovelfuls of dirt than I did with water. The year before, Colorado had lost 133 homes and more than 138,000...