Official site: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/burn/
Inspired by Timothy Egan’s best-selling book, THE BIG BURN is the dramatic story of the massive wildfire that swept across the Northern Rockies in the summer of 1910.
In the spring of 1905, the first group of fresh-faced graduates of Yale’s Forestry School began to arrive in the bawdy frontier towns of the West. These first employees of the Forest Service were given the monumental task of managing the newly created national forests in the Northern Rockies. Nothing could have prepared them for the severity of the drought there in 1910. Fires broke out continually and were fought by the rookie rangers as best they could. In mid-August, the particularly destructive fire season hit its peak: in just 36 hours, a firestorm burned more than three million acres and killed at least 78 firefighters, confronting the fledgling U.S. Forest Service with a catastrophe that would define the agency and the nation’s fire policy for much of the twentieth century.
As America tries to manage its fire-prone landscapes in the twenty-first century, THE BIG BURN provides a cautionary tale of heroism and sacrifice, arrogance and greed, hubris and, ultimately, humility, in the face of nature’s frightening power.
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Historical documentaries are my absolute favorite thing to watch on YouTube. Thanks for posting PBS!!
This story is also told in a book called "Fire on the Rim" by Stephen J. Pyne. It is non-fiction, a great read, very funny, and I highly recommend it. He is here at 2:40
PBS is the undisputed champion of Doc. 🥊
There was a movie kinda based on this called a ranger a Cook and a hole in the sky Sam Elliott starred in it
Trusting government to do anything intelligently is insane, now due to mismanagement by the government we have had horrific fires
Jamie Hyneman time traveling to the founding of the USFS there at 11:12 in the bottom left.
Buffalo soldiers were American heroes 😊
I wish the indigeous people were not treated so horrible. They are a natural resource too.
This had to of tripled the price of lumber.
I lived a few miles from Wallace and the one vision that will forever be embedded in my head is the still existent huge metal shutters on the brick buildings. I wonder if there is a documentary on smelterville, just a few miles from Wallace and it being one of the largest toxic contaminated superfund sites in the world unfortunately from its efforts to supply lead to the military for war efforts. My dog ultimately died from swimming in a pond on a gold course that is ground zero for the smelter.
We have plenty of oil but oxen won’t let us have it
I think we need that. We have a national forest firefighters and wildfire monument in Washington DC.
To honor to honor all of the men and women who gave their lives.
The greatest Prevention 4 for spiders is logged industry that puts firewall Gen. It, send the forest out.
And And it protects the forest by reforestation that would save millions of dollars and thousands of lives and and promote a business that will be. Excellent for our economy. I think we need a lot more common sense when it comes to managing Our natural resources
Same as in Maui today ,run by not a clue Democrats .
PBS should not be funded by tax payers ,period .
When will mankind ever learn, you cannot tame nature.
To the black soldier: Damn Right.( at the point of ur bayonet.
Gifford Pinchot wasn't a forester any more than he was an advocate for saving forests. He was a lowlife criminal Eugenicist (just like Roosevelt). Both were politicians and bureaucrats. Pinchot later became Governor of Pennsylvania. Both men did the bidding (and Policy Agenda) of the Zionist/ Globalist International Central Bankers (Rothschild Agents like John D. Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan, among many others), who wanted to Steal Public Land away from the Citizens and prevent the Citizenry from being given Homesteads as had been the general Government Policy of Western Expansionism and "Manifest Destiny" (to facilitate Westward Migration and Homesteads for the Citizenry). President Taft fired Pinchot, because he was well aware his agenda had nothing to do with so-called "Conservation".
As always PBS (and the people behind these "Documentaries") fail to do any real investigative journalism on the topics at hand). They are great (sometimes mindless entertainment to be sure), but much of it could be rightfully and truthfully called propaganda brainwashing. Government Stolen National Forests (so-called "Public Lands the Public cannot make use of for the most part) benefit the public in essentially no way, shape or form. They benefit Politicians, Bureaucrats, Bankers, and the corporations they allow to exploit the resources on the land.
Their failed and increasingly radical environmental policies ultimately created the model for why we have devastating massive Wildfires nowadays. They didn't know how to manage the Forests or so called public lands. The most effective way is not clear-cutting (how Pinchot's family made their money), but selective logging and replanting (the same model which evolved into what is done today).
Imagine how hard they would have spun this if it happened right now! Even the hardest nosed scientist would blame climate change.
Such a wonderful doc. !!!!!!!!!!. What underappreciated hero's..
I love the program and it is relevant to my family. My ancestors (Rankin) lived in the path of the fire. If not for a brave man with a motorcar who evacuated the family, my history would be a lot different.
Raging wildfires not caused by climate change? Who would've thought?
Let it burn. Yeah the scars of 1910s are there. However we should’ve seen scars from before on the landscape but because people try to avoid them we just get deeper wounds.