About Those Pesky Wildfires in Oregon...

Join me in supporting the Thirteen Crosses film project to support our wildland firefighting community.

As smoke from nearby wildfires lingers for the ninth week of this summer, my thoughts have turned to the brave men and women who have spent this time in the proverbial and literal trenches to keep us safe. Just yesterday, I heard a report on the radio about the difficult conditions in which wildland firefighters work. There are no breaks, no showers, and injuries abound. They are underfunded and understaffed and will lose many crewmembers when college students, who make up a significant percentage of their ranks, return to school. Incident management teams are stretched so thin that most firefighters in the wilderness find themselves isolated and left to fend for themselves. Stories such as those are why I am proud to support the Thirteen Crosses film project.

Thirteen Crosses is a documentary film project spearheaded by filmmaker Taylor James Moe chronicling the tragedy of the Mann Gulch fire of 1949. It is a biopic of brave young men sent into the wilderness with too little experience, support, and resources and who, by a critical misjudgment of the fire, found themselves in a race for their lives. Thirteen of them perished. While the story is compelling and relevant and illustrates the lessons learned from the tragedy that apply to wildland firefighting today, the project is not only intended to bring awareness to the challenges wildland firefighters face every day but also to raise money to support the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, which supports the families of wounded and fallen firefighters.

I have been involved in this project for just under two years. I am listed on their team as the “writer,” and I helped advise the crafting of the film's narrative. In working on this project, I learned all about the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949, the lessons learned from it, and about the Wildland Firefighting community, whom I have come to believe are not praised or valued enough by our society. Wildfires are THE critical issue facing the American West, more in my estimation than any other. The impacts on our ecology, air quality, safety, and overall health are dire. Case in point: last week, my seven-year-old son developed a cough from the smoke, which I believe is just the beginning of the deleterious health impacts he will suffer from out-of-control wildfires in our region. It scares the dickens out of me for what’s in store for his future.

While the long-term solution to better manage our wildland resources and, ultimately, wildfires remains politically controversial, I feel a good first step toward making things better is to valorize and support the people who fight every day against the raging flames. The Thirteen Crosses film project aims to do just that. It seeks to highlight the critical importance of wildland firefighters in the past half-century and raise funds to support them today when they face increasing fire frequency and intensity on a limited and stagnant budget. The following is the teaser trailer for the film:

Join me in supporting this film project, and please consider donating on their website below. Your tax-deductible donation goes directly toward the film's production costs, to be released in 2025. All proceeds from the film will directly go to the Wildland Firefighting Foundation to support the heroes on the front lines of our smoky summer fire season. Thank you so much for your attention and participation.