I live in Central Washington where a lot of the current fires are burning. I have lots of friends that are fighting on the lines now or have over the years, most of my family has as well. Its interesting to read articles about something that is a reality to you, as if it was some strange thing happening in far off lands that you get to read about in NatGeo.<p>There is no drought that caused this, this years fire season has been waiting to happen for a long time. Better it happen now then wait to get worse. Hopefully, moving forward we can start practicing better forest maintenance and fire controls.
This reminds me of some essays in the book "Fire" by Sebastian Hunger. I mentioned it to my guide when I went white water rafting on the Pouvre River in Colorado just after they had a big fire. He said his roommate worked as a hotshot fighting fires who told him that the worst feeling is after days holding a fire when one little ember sails over your firebreak and ignites the trees beyond. All that work for nothing.
After the Yarnell Hill Fire tragedy[0] happened, I got kind of interested in this stuff and wanted to learn more. I came across a pretty cool & interesting forum[1] that it seems is frequented by some of these wilderness firefighters.<p>Thought I'd share for anyone else interested -- BTW, the final report on the Yarnell Hill tragedy is also a very good read for those interested, just don't have a link handy...<p>[0] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarnell_Hill_Fire" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarnell_Hill_Fire</a><p>[1] - <a href="http://hotlist.wildlandfire.com/forum.php" rel="nofollow">http://hotlist.wildlandfire.com/forum.php</a>
This page crashes over and over for me on iPad Safari iOS 8.4<p>Don't have time to dig in right now but I'm curious if is crashes for other people?