God bless the firefighters

Mother Jones reminds you that so far this year 12 firefighters have died fighting blazes in the US west.

Earlier this month, a 20-year-old digging a fireline 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 US Forest Service firefighters lined up outside the Moscow, Idaho, 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 an honor guard lead the family of Anne Veseth into the sanctuary.

the essay discusses issues of firefighting: whether aggressively fighting fires is a good approach, and points out that the "HotShot" professionals noted the dangerous dead wood made fighting this fire too dangerous, but that the dead firefighter was under local supervision.

a good article about the controversy.

I should note that when we hiked out west, the underbrush was full of long dead trees, in contrast to the bushier underbrush of eastern forests. So if a fire starts, there is a lot of dry timber to cause a firestorm.

and yes, climate change has a lot to do with this, although the drying of the western climate long predates the latest surge of man made global warming...part of the problem is that there are more people living in these areas.