Storm King Mountain, 1994

On July 6th 1994 a wildfire, on Storm King Mountain, outside of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, took the lives of 14 firefighters. I was in Glenwood that fall and remember seeing the charred remains of the mountain. There now stands, in Two Rivers Park, a monument to the brave men and woman who lost their lives in what was known as the South Canyon Fire. Many were part of a Hot-Shot crew out of Prineville, Oregon, three were Smokejumpers and two were helitack firefighters, each is memorialized on stones surrounding the statue that now overlooks Storm King Mountain. The statue, as you may see, shows each group, Hot-Shot, Smokejumper and Helitack. There is a memorial trail that leads up past markers for the fallen firefighters, but every time I've been to Glenwood I've never had the time to hike it. Someday I'll make time. A good book was written to help explain what happened, by John N. Maclean, called Fire on the Mountain, it's a good read. John's father, Norman, studied and wrote a book about the Mann Gulch fire in Montana that killed 13 firefighters in 1949.

Prineville, Oregon Hot-Shot crewmembers: Scott Blecha, Kathi Beck, Tami Bickett, Levi Brinkley, Doug Dunbar, Terri Hagan, Bonnie Holtby, Rob Johnson and Jon Kelso. Smokejumpers: Don Mackey, Roger Roth and James Thrash. Helitack firefighters: Robert Browning and Richard Tyler.

These pictures are from July 2005.