Ghosts of the Fireground by Peter M Leschak

Author:Peter M Leschak
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Distribution
Published: 2018-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

SIX

TREMBLING IN EVERY LIMB

Back at Grand Marais on July 31, I pulled the morning weather forecast off the fax—my first priority each day. Firefighters and flyers are obsessed by weather reports and satellite images, performing fresh auguries with each new dose of meteorological data. With the possible exception of farmers and fishermen, no one spends more time and energy divining the future from which way the wind is blowing. You quickly understand your life tomorrow may depend on what’s happening three states away this afternoon.

In his book Chaos, James Gleick outlined modern theories in physics, proposing that small differences of input into a natural system can rapidly develop into huge differences of output: “In weather, for example, this translates into what is only half-jokingly known as the Butterfly Effect—the notion that a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.”

Though Peshtigo’s firestorm was relatively brief, the violent holocaust was the result of many inputs, most of them benign or neutral in themselves: the cluster of small fires burning off and on for much of the season; the widespread, intensive logging operations; the lack of organized, effective fire suppression; unusual autumn weather conditions not only in Wisconsin but also in the Rockies and the high plains (and maybe in Peking); human attitudes toward fire and nature in general, not least the American notion of Manifest Destiny, which shaded into religious beliefs about God’s will. Father Pernin, presumably unaware of nuances governing fire ecology and climatology, certainly ascribed the firestorm to divine purpose.

He was born in France around 1825 and probably held European views concerning fire. On the continent, the basic attitude was distrust of unregulated fire, and open burning was mainly confined to agricultural use, such as field cleansing. Through intensive land management (and greater population density), wildfires as known in the New World had been largely banished. When Spain established a forestry school in 1848, France was one of the sources it looked to as a guide for forest regulations and practices. So Pernin’s nationality may’ve been one reason he was apparently more alarmed early on than many of his neighbors by the fires “gleaming everywhere” in the fall of 1871.

The weather report in my hand explained why the northeastern Minnesota summer had been cooler and wetter than normal:

An extensive area of ice pack still covers southern Hudson Bay and northern James Bay. … It is rather unusual for our area to have a nearby snow-covered source of air masses during the first week of August. … The time will come when the ice fields begin thickening with the onset of early autumn.

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