Refuge Notebook
Article
Dated
November 14, 2003
The 2003 fire season ? remembering those who have fallen
By Doug Newbould
It is an easy thing ? to grow numb. All you have to do
is watch the news, listen to the radio or read the newspaper on a regular basis.
Death and destruction assail our senses every day. There is a human condition
that can result from overexposure to sensory stimulus. Some call it information
overload, others ? desensitization. Whatever it's called, repeated exposure to
the words, the imagery and the sounds of destruction can numb us to human suffering
and environmental catastrophe.
The 2003 wildland fire season has been just
another in a series of newsmakers. The headlines have almost daily, trumpeted
the latest casualties and property losses. Words like firestorm, holocaust and
conflagration are tossed around like ping-pong balls in a lottery machine. The
"Halloween Fires", so far, caused the deaths of at least twenty people
and destroyed thousands of structures in southern California. Restoration will
cost billions. Before California, there was devastation in Oregon, in Montana
and in New Mexico.
But there is one piece of information that seems to
be missing from the national news stories. Have you heard how many wildland firefighters
died in the line of duty this year? I haven't. So I searched several wildland
fire management websites and came up with a list of twenty fallen firefighters
through August 2003. I know at least one firefighter died in California, since
then.
Another twenty wildland firefighters perished in the record fire
season of 2000. From my perspective, I don't think this information is making
it into the national consciousness. Perhaps the same can be said about the structural
firefighting community. In 2002, ninety-nine firefighters (80 structural and 19
wildland) from 36 states gave their lives in the line of duty.
Lest we
forget these fallen heroes, there are two national firefighter memorial sites.
The National Fallen Firefighters Foundation has developed a beautiful memorial
park in Emmitsburg, Maryland, about an hour and a half drive north of Washington,
D.C. They conduct a national firefighter memorial service every year. This year's
memorial was Sunday, October 5th. For more information you can visit the website
at: www.firehero.org, or you can write to: Post Office Drawer 498 / Emmitsburg,
MD 21727.
The second memorial is located at the National Interagency Fire
Center in Boise, Idaho. The Wildland Firefighter Monument honors "the men
and women who fight our nation's wildfires". You can learn more about this
monument and the firefighters who have died in the line of duty at: http://wffoundation.org/monument.html.
Let's do our best to honor those who give their lives to protect ours.
_______________________________________________
Doug Newbould is the Fire
Management Officer at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. For more information
about the Refuge - visit headquarters in Soldotna, call (907) 262-7021, or visit
our website at http://kenai.fws.gov
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