What Went Wrong at Storm King Mountain PDF

WHAT WENT WRONG AT STORM KING M ou~TA1~ Sebastian Junger The majn thing Brad Haugh remembers about his escape was the...

WHAT WENT WRONG AT STORM KING M ou~TA1~ Sebastian Junger The majn thing Brad Haugh remembers about his escape was the thunderous tJ):alYZe sound of his own heart. It was beating two hundred times a minute, and by 1'isuaJa1 1 the time he and the two smoke jumpers running with him had crested a steep Howwould:;,i were pho~ ridge in Colorado, everyone behind them was dead. scene?.,_, Their coworkers on the slope at their backs had been overrun by flames that Haugh guessed were three hundred feet high. The fire raced a quarter mile up 0 Targeted~ the mountain in about two minutes, hitting speeds of eighteen miles an hour. Tools dropped in its path were completely incinerated. Temperatures reached two thousand degrees-hot enough co melt gold or fire clay. 10 "The fire blew up beh ind a little ridge below me, " Haugh said later. "People were yelling into their radios, 'Run! Run! Run!' I was roughly one hundred and fifty feet from the top of the hill, and the fire got there in ten or twelve seconds. I made it over che cop and just tumbled and rolled down the ocher side, and when I turned around, there was just chis incredible wall of flame." Haugh was one of forty-nine fire fighters caught in a wildfire that stunned (~ Cllf \._./ the nation with its swiftness and its fury. Fourteen elite fire fighters perished Langua on a spine of Storm King Mountain, seven miles west of Glenwood Springs, Etymology Colorado. They died on a steep, rocky slope in a fire initially so small that the history is etymolog>: crews had not taken it seriously. They died while cars passed within sight on elite, pronou 20 the interstate below and people in the valley aimed their camcorders at the fire comes frotn from garage roofs. efigere, me There were many other fire fighters on Storm King when Brad Haugh out ore. es 16~18. I1n crested the ridge, yet he feared that he and the two men with him were the only etymology 0 ones on the mountain left alive. That thought-not the flames-caused him co figu re out its ct- this senten panic. He ran blindly and nearly knocked himself unconscious against a tree. Fires were spotting all around him as the front of the flames chased him. The roar was deafening; "a tornado on fire" was how he later described it. The light, he remembered, was a weird blood-red that fascinated him even as he ran. 1. smoke jumpers: people who fight forest fires by parachuting to remote locations. Once on the ground, they carry heavy supplies on their backs and hike over rough terrain. 558 UNIT 5: AUTHOR 'S PURPOSE.. were Eric H h rwo smoke Ju · rs W lth h n n ip k e an d K ev in T e mpe d h Erickson. fl · g o ff h 'is h an d s · b el esh 30 H 1p ke had been so a lY bu rn e t e. was ha ng in Haugh paused bn. fl h. m strips e Y to_ co Hect in imse lf, th en le d th e tw o m en a b ards down the mou on ly lo ng en ou o u t a hu nd re. d. y st ntain, dpdp g O gh to w ra p _H1pke ,s ha. in wet T-shirts. ~ Ar they st arte own ag ai n , th e fire w as nds sp re ad in g b eh in h d nd acres an ou ak pi ny on , an d Ju them at a thousa.. r, o , m pe r sp on ta ne · ::,er in the heat. ou sl y comb usnn "I didn't have an. h y mg tmares a bo ut it later, " sat·d H au gh "B I d id waking up in the ,,. ut k ee night very disori p ented.... 0 he South C anyo c. as it was called, 40 T.. h a hg trun people pai 1t th my or ro c rty ·d n nre, g sm·ke 1·n the steep hills ou ts id · little nu·nd be fires across the dr ca us e ou gh t- pl ag ue d ig ni te d o n S at ur. e st G le. dr y li gh tn in g h n w o o d da y, July 2, as. S pn ng s. At firs ad al re ad y trig. gered t k of smo e was no big deal. But this blaze ·. at e th at da y; an ot he r wis. p Bureau of Land co nt in ue d to gr. M an ag em en t; (B ff ow, p ro m p u n g LM) district o i. G the dispatch a seven- member crew on ce m ra n d Ju. th e m or ~ in g o f n cu o n to landing site, desi Jul~ 5 to prepar gnated H-1 , an _e a he King. At this po d st art cu tu n g a fire li copter int the blaze was lm e al on g a n d and juniper cove cooking slowly g e o f Storm ring the steep dr th ro u g h th e sp ainage below. G ar se pi ny on to the east , an le nw oo d S pr in d a pricey develo gs was visible to the west. In pment called C terstate 7 0 follo an y o n C re ek E wed the C ol or ad st at es was a mile so below, and occa o River o n e th sionally the fire o u sa n d feet jackets bumping fighters co ul d se through the rapi e rafters in br ig ds. D ht ly co lo re d life T he BLM crew worked all day, hike down to m un ti l chain-saw Q TAKEM015 ake repairs. Rep pr ob le m s fo rc ed Idaho and Monta lacing th em wer th em to Reread lines~ na (eight more w e ei gh t sm ok e ju ou ld be ad de d m pe rs from is lunger ~ -:1 p~ac~uted onto th e ne xt m or ni the ridgetop to ng ) w ho througlmti i.i rmdmght and th co nt in ue cu tt in en claimed a few g fire li ne. T h ey time? NoteecD hours' sleep o n w or ke d until Just before dawn, th e ro ck y your ti ~ on the morning g ro u n d. B~anco led the B o f July 6, In ci de LM_crew back up nt C o m m an d er discuss_ed strategy th e steep slope. B ut ch w it h th e smoke ju m pe A rr iv in g at th e to p, Blanco 60 same nm r in charge, D o e, the BLM offic n M e in G dJ ac ke y. A t ab ou t the f the fiire, the twenty-membe ran un cn.on disp at e h ed to rom O regon who r P. ·11 H o n e ad di ti on al crew nnevi e ot s h Th k. se helmet embl · ot s, a cr ac k in te ra ge nc y un it e sm ridge and oareouJund mpers ha d cleareem is a coyote d an cm. g over or an ge fl tw l d an ot h l d. ame. onto 'it. T he first e h.. er con+:ve-t m yf m th aft an m g sp ot , H -2 , o n th e m. and crouched be u n ge n t O the e er no on , a tr an am um.t from below hi nd ks h p. ·n nn ev i e crew sp or t he li co pt er settled. k T h ro 'deb as t e ch op p lift d ffra n th ro u g h th e ro to r wash C ontingettl ~ Bic et t , Blecha · ey een ch er Brinkle D b osen al h b e·calo to pi ck u p th e rest.. ,j~ n. agath ~'1i1 , y, un a.r H ag P a l eu Y ror th e c o ft he representti't ' en , H o lt by, Jo hn first flight in: B k so n , an d Kelso ee , group. Rat her 2 - sp on tan eo us ly b. 3. Bureau of la com usting: self-ignitin nd MaNgem.. Su st am t· g th ro ug h an in ,ng th e he alt h d....n. an agency te rn al ch em ic al "th ac tio n ' ivers,ty, an d pr w, in th e U.S od uc tivit f D. ·. ep ar tm en t of th 56 0 Y O pu bh c la nd s. e In ter io r, in ch ar ge of UN lT 5: AU TH OR'S PU RP O SE 4 8 , -mummm.i La  t,£tt. rew mates, these nine hotshots started downslope into the. for ch e1r c wait G NARRATIVE rning valley- e 1han. 1s. roughly nor th-sou th , with (Storm King Mountam. a central NONFICTION bu I ut o. What do you learn from '[he ay~ from the 8,793-foot summn to H-2. Another half mile south Junger's charaderizatlon spine ru~n;~g e was the larger site, H-1. The fire had started on a steep slope of the smoke jumpers? ~ 0 ng rhis Jeared safe areas and was spreading slowly. t,elo"' these was to cut a wide firebreak4 along the ridgetop and a smaller "fhe scrat~~lope to contain the blaze on the southwestern flank of the line dowtl t ps would be attacked with retardant drops 5 from choppers. If ·d e Flare-uroblems, crews co uld eas1·1y reac h H -1 m ri g ·. fi1ve or ten minutes. and deflect (cfT-fl~kt'l v. to there werde p their fire shelters-light foil sheets that resemble space blankets fend off or avert the crawl un er. d d ct heat of up to six hun red egrees. direction of something wd ~ d 6 · - - -k· a natural or constructed barrier used to stop fires that may occur. 4 firel,!ei · rops· the air-dropping of chemicals to help retard or delay the spread of fire. 5. ret,rd'"t d · The south Canyon Fire , Lightning strikes mountain, igniting m GJ GRAPHIC AIDS Study th e graphic shown. brushfire. What does it tell you about the progress of the fire? What other spatial relationships does it show? H-2 i t 3 Westerly winds fan flames back up mountain toward firefighters. t Hipke Hau h at tim g , and Erickson e of explosion 1· Windsock Indicates strong westerly winds t Prineville nine atr rne of explosion ~ Location of deployed "-.{; fire shelters BLOWUP : WHAT WENT WRONG AT STORM KING MOUNTAIN 561  early "It was just an ugly little creeper," the BL~' s Brad Haug h said of the nds of stages of the fire. Every summer, fire fighte~s hk_e Haug h put out thousa to think blazes like this one all over Colorado; at this pomt there was no reason South Canyon would be any different. e secon O e rmev1 e crew roppe onto -2 aroun 3:00 P.M Haugh · and began widening the prima ry fire line. Two hundr ed feet below, the was clearing brush with his chain saw on a 33 perce nt slope. That meant of a sand ground rose one foot for every yard climbed, rough ly the steepness Kevlar dune. The grade near the top was closer to 50 perce nt. He wore bulky r's chaps and a rucksack loaded with two gallons of water weigh ing 90 sawye articles. fifteen pounds, a folding knife, freeze-dried rations, and some toilet He also carried a folding fire shelter and a Stihl 056 chain saw that weighed Ot ten or twelve pound s. Even loaded down as he was, Haug h could probab ly argeted~~; it, and have reached the ridgetop in less than one minut e if he had pushe d two H-1 in five or ten minutes. Wildfires rarely spread faster than one or lled to miles an hour, and the vast majority of fire fighters are never compe evaluation outrun them -muc h less fight to survive them. By conve ntiona l fire standards, Haug h was considered safe. or e A out t ree- irty Haug too is secon re o t e ay. It was so 1oo had already consu med a gallon of the water he carried. The fire was burning Prineville slowly in the drainage floor, and the crews fighting it-ni ne from the in thick unit and twelve smoke jump ers-w ere several hundr ed feet below him Gambel oak, some of the most flammable wood in the West. the Around 3:50 Haug h and his swam per-a sawyer's helpe r who flings boss cut brush off the fire line-w ere finishing their break when their crew from announced they were pulling out. Wind s were pickin g up from a cold life. They that had moved in a half hour earlier, and the fire was snapp ing to D TAKE NOTil 1 were ordered to climb to the ridgetop and wait it out. O Reread lines it.'~ for an entire moun tainsi de to ignite sudde nly, but it's not unhea rd Whatha~ · It's rare 1wii~ 110 of. If you stand near H-2 and look severa l miles to the west, you can see a rso.M P.. a wildfire happened ~~ moun tain called Battlement Mesa. In 1976, three men died there in PUtthest ~ er on later re-created in a training video called Situation #8. Every crew memb timeline. seen it. In Situat ion #8, a crew is workin g Storm King would certainly have el oak upslope of a small fire in extremely dry condi tions. Flames ignite Gamb rhe flames and race up the hill, encouraged by winds. The steep terrain funnels men are upward, and fire intensity careens off the chart, a classic blowup. Four were overrun, three die. The survivor, who suffered horrib le burns, says they at never alerted to the critical wind shift -an accusation rhe BLM denied the rime.... 0 · d h' th. all 0 [flames 120 At about 4·00 · p ·M. · h" gh wm s 1c e moun cam and pushe d aw and north, up th ~ we~r side _of the drainage. Along the ridge, the BLM crew th e upper Prmeville unit began moving to the safety of H-1. Below chem, · · h t Jumpe · eig a Don Mackey ordered h is rs to retreat up to a burned-over are beneath H-1. He then start ed cross-s lope to Jorn.. three ocher smok e JUm · pers 562 UNIT 5: AU THOR 'S PURPOS E  · d hem t hat ith rhe Prinevil le nine. Apparenhtly, no one had ad · vise t J lo)'c u" d. In t e few min utes it t k M key to dcp.. n was bec omi ng espe rate oo ac fi h h fi.. d nag "I d'10cd h 51ruan° t e trc JUm pe east across the drai ra r e h rwcl ve fire ,g rers, , , e. · in t e h "A d then another ord er came to evacu t. " Th·,tto rder JO... said Haug I. n c. hir 1n- · th "d 1. who was hurriedlyacond t' 111 Burc. h B anco on e rt gc me,. UC mg t.- ,. _ ch the prev ious one " ,lfllt' 1rO nger warning than c.h ,acuarion. l l11s was a mu stro h "d saw and · radi 'I ni -ce''I J Haugh. "I sent my swamper to t e rt getop with a oec I P. ·11. t below me,. 1 !'Cl"' c:u soon as rhe owe r rmev, e "contmgent came into sigh thar as h c Id bump up to t e sarety zone.d wou I. d the fire dangerously dos e-th oug h Suddenly. fie~ce wester _Ywm s rove the ~~suspecting fire fighters. "The srill hidden behind the thick bru sh~ to chem, said Haugh. "They were walking crew was unaware of ':h~ t was behmd s in place." As Haugh watched them, at a slow pace, cools snll m hand and pack said that his brother-in-law was asmoke jumper appeared at his side. "He take his picture." down in the drainage, and he wanted to w,.o Thar fellow was Kevin Erickson, and Don Mackey was his brother-in-la aimed his camera, everythi ng belo w now in serious trouble below. As Erickson ng co viewfinder, I saw them beginni him seemed co explode. "Through the ," Erickson said. "As I cook the picture, run, with fire everywhere behind them I cook one more look back and saw I Brad grabbed me and turned me around. I on Haugh and Erickson were smoke I a wall of fire coming uphill." Closing in I r fire fighters in a ragged line behind I jumper James Thrash and the twelve othe I screaming, "Run! Run! Run!" on I him. Though Blanco and others were now I loy the fire shelter he would die in. I the radio, Thrash chose to stop and dep I Haugh and Erickson up the hill. The Eric Hipke ran around him and followed I a river thundering I ;,_i three-hundred-foot-h igh flames chasing chem sounded like B TAKE NOTES I over a waterfall. B Summarize what happened at about Maclean writes that dying in a Then add n his book Young Men and Fire, Norman 4 :00 P.M. I forest fire is actually like experiencing thre legs as you run, then the scorching of you body. That, roughly, is what happens co woo e deaths: first the failure of your r lungs, finally the burning of your d when it burns. Water is driven out inside the wood and ignited; finally, the by the heat; then gases are superheated ing is left but carbon. cellulose is consumed. In the end noth fires that burn more than a few acres This process is usually a slow one, and for example, only burned fifty acres per hour are rare. The South Canyon fire, two thousand acres l/;J in the first three days. So why did it suddenly rip through ide explode in a chain reaction that was in a couple of hours? Why did one hills. fast enough to catch birds in midair? t drying the fuel in front of it-f irS. Fire typically spreads by slowly heating ter~ ahead it, then igniting it. Usually, a walking pace will easily keep fire figh tion of wind, fuel, and terram conspire (kan-spir') v. to of chis process. But sometimes a combina the fire explodes out of control. _One plan or plot secretly ~ to produce a blowup in which up- and the one most popular m explanation for why South Canyon blew IN 563 NG AT STOR M KING MOU NTA BLOW UP: WHA T WEN T WRO RE -AP FOR AD VA NC ED LEA RN ER S/P uss FOR STRATEGIC READERS Evaluate an Analogy Have students disc · ts ~m Prehension Support Make these poin Ma the analogy that Junger makes between the J rma n - _,.... -~.,, nPrson in a forest fire and  A fire fi ghter observing the South Canyon fire J Glenwood Springs-wa s that it was just so... steep and dry up there and rhe wind blew so hard that the mountain was swept with flame. Thar's plausible; 17 0 similar conditions in other fires have certainly produced extreme fire behavior. The other explanation turns on a rare phenomenon called superheating. Normally, radiant heat 6 drives volatile7 gases-called turpines-ou t of the pinyon and juniper just minutes before they are consumed. But sometimes hor air rises up a steep slope from a blaze and drives turpines out of a whole hillside full of timber. The gases lie heavily along the contours of the slopes, and when the right combination of wind and flame reaches them, they explode. Ir's like leaving your gas stove burners on for a few hours and then setting a march ro your kitchen. A mountainside on the verge of combustion is a subtle but not necessarily 1so undetectable thing; there are stories of crews pulling out of a creepy-feeling canyon and then watching it blow up behind them. Turpines have an od_or, and that's possibly why some of the Prineville survivors said that something had "seemed wrong." The westward-facing hillside had been drying all aft ernoon 10 · t he summer sun. Hot air was sucked up the drainage as 1·f It · were 6 d. · ra ant heat: heat that passes through the air, heating solid objects that in turn heat the surroun ding area. 7. volatile: explosive. 564 UNIT 5: AUTHOR 'S PURPOSE  flue. The powerful winds that hit around 4:00 P.M. blew the fire up anope~ ac the hottest time of day. And turpines, having baked for hours che ~~ have lit the whole hillside practically at once. ID ' ID TAKE NOTES ,oul Scorm King blew, Haugh had to run 150 feet straight up a fire Based on Junger's W}ten. D.. d".. a runner and explanation of super· "h oor fooung. esp1te rigorous con 1t1onmg -he is P li new1tbuilder-hi h hr heating, what might s heart rate s ot t ough the roof and his adrenal glands have been happening a l,ody d enough epmep · hnne · 8 mto h"LS system to kilI a house cat. Behind him, for several hours before durnpe f flame were laid flat against the hillside by 50 mph winds. The inferno 4:00 P.M.7 Indicate this sheets o. b "b. ,9 occurrence on d chrough inherently com usu le vegetation that had been desiccated possible h bh.. fi roareby drought, t en y ot-a1r convecuon, mally by a small grass fire that your timeline. r. nrsc. flashed through a few days ear11er. The m01srure content of the fine dead fuels conceivably explosive. As (kan-sev'a-ble) adv. was lacer estimated to be as low as 2 or 3 percent-absolutely possibly Haugh ran, panick_ed sh~uts came over the tiny radio dipped ro his vest for eople to drop their equipment and flee. One brief thought flashed through rigorous (rYg'ar-as) adj. strict, uncompromising ts mind-"So chis is what it's like to run for your life"-and he didn't chink aoain until he reached the ridgetop. r, Above him, the BLM and upper Prineville crews had abandoned hope of reaching H-1 and scrambled toward H-2. When that route too was blocked, they rurned and plunged over the ridge. Due south, one hundred feet below ♦ ♦ GRAMMARANDSTYLE Reread lines 201-203. H-1, che eight smoke jumpers who had been ordered out by Don Mackey Notice how Junger uses fifteen minutes earlier were crawling under their foil shelters to wait our the the adverb clause ·when approaching fire storm. At Canyon Creek far below, a crew of fresh smoke that route too was jumpers who were preparing to hike in watched in horror as eight little silver blocked" to describe at point the Prineville squares appeared on the mountainside. Meanwhile, hidden from view by what crew plunged over the smoke, Mackey, the Prineville nine, and the three smoke jumpers were running ridge. Adverb clauses 110 a race only one of them, Hipke, would win. help to add important In che end twelve of the dead were found along the lower fire line. Prineville details to writing, hotshot Score Blecha had also run past Thrash bur lost his race a hundred feet telling when or where something happened, for from the ridgeline. The rest were in two main groups below a tree-the tree, example. as ic came co be known, where Haugh had scarred his run-a few clumped so close together chat their bodies were actually couching. Only smoke jumpers Thrash and Roger Roth had deployed their shelters, but the blistering heat disintegrated che foil. Kathi Beck died alongside Thrash, parcly under his shelter. It seemed that in his last agony, Thrash may have tried to pull her in. In addition, Richard Tyler and Robert Browning, rwo fire fighters deployed ' ' ~arlier to direct helicopter operations, perished just north of H-2, only 0 a few have saved them. D D PATTERNS OF undred feet from a rocky area char might ORGANIZATION The Prineville nine's dash for safety ended after three hundred feet. They Why do you think Junger 1 :·ere caught just three or four seconds before Haugh himself cleared ~e chose to present these Reconstru cnng che details in spatial order? ridgecop, and he could hear their screams over his radio. details of the victims' agonized last seconds would occupy many hours of professional counseling for che survivors. 8. tpl. I d b the body that speeds up nephrlne: another name for adrenaline, a natural chemical re ease Y. heartbeats, improves breathing and increases blood flow to muscles dunng exercise. 9· d~iccat d ' e : thoroughly dried out. WENT WRONG AT STO RM KING MOUNTAIN 565 BLOW U P: WHA T FOR ADVANCED LEARNE~S~~RE~AP  Dying in a fire is often less _a process of burn " i~g than of asp~yxiation. 10.....,.~ Thei r suffering was prob ably intense but shor t-liv ed. PathologJSts looked for carbon in their lungs and uppe r airways and foun d none , whic h meant the BO victims weren't brea thin g whe n the fire pa~s ed over them. The ir lungs were filled with fluid, their thro ats were closed m laryngeal spas ms-r espo nses to superheated air- and their bloo d cont aine d to~ic lev~ls of carb on monoxide. This gas, given off duri ng incomplete com bust ion, displaces oxygen in the blood and kills very quickly. ♦ "The y died after a few breaths_at most,~ sai~ Rob Kur_tzman, a pathologist at the Gran d Junc tion Com mun ity Hos pital , prob ably m less than thirty seconds. All the body chan ges- the char ring , the muscle cont racti ons, the bone frac ture s-ha ppen ed after they were dead." 0 bout four -thir ty Hau gh, Erickson, and Hipk 240 A Interstate 70. Just an hour before, they had break on the mou ntain ; now four teen peop knew at that poin t was that Blanco, the incid e staggered onto enjoyed a well-earned le were dead. But all they ent com man der, was calling out O NARRATiVt NONfiC lloM Rcrcad li~ 1lJ1 names on the radio and a lot of people were n't answering. Whymightrur~ Hau gh and Erickson laid Hipk e in the shad included 11,~,~ e of a police cruiser and doused information~ him with water to lower his body temp eratu 111 re and prevent him from going narrativt? into shock. Blanco clim bed back up towa rd the fire to look for more survivors O Targeted ~- but found none. The eight smoke jump ers who 'd deployed their shelters below H-1 emerged, shaken but unhu rt. The y were saved not by their shelters but by having deployed them on previously burn ed grou nd. The fire was still 250 pum ping at this point, and Glen woo d Springs was now in danger. Flames were racing eastward along the upper ridges, and the BLM com man d post at nearby Cany on Creek had begun ordering residents to evacuate. Hau gh's BLM crew had survived. The othe r Prineville Hot shot s-th e upper plac eme nts-- mad e it out as well. The y had snak ed their way dow n the east side of the ridge through a hellish maze of spot fires and exploding trees. Two of them had tried to deploy their shelters but were dragged onw ard by friends. 0 C) NARRATIVt Word quickly filtered back to BLM officials NONFICTION in Gran d Junc tion that something terrible had happ ened on Stor m What detai~~ King. Mik e Mot tice, the agency's that the oth~;· area manager, had driven past the blowup and arrived at his Glen woo d Springs Hotshots a1w·ll1 26o office around 5:00 P.M. Minutes later crews began arriving from the mountain , through ah~ and Mottice realized for the first time that there journe)' to sur,r,I were people unac coun ted for. "I hoped that the fire shelters wou ld save them ," he said. "Bu t that evening some smoke jumpers confirmed that there were deat hs."... The _next morning investigators began to mea sure things, pond er the dynamics of the mou ntain , and coax secrets from the dead. The fir st que st ion was how fast the fire had moved, and Haugh's estir nate - that the last th ree hund red feet were covered in abou t twelve seco nds- curn ed out to be close In the end h · · tors conf · , t e mvesuga irme d that the fiIre h ad 10. asphyxiation: the medical term for suffoc at· ion. 566 UNIT 5: AUTH OR'S PURP OSE DIF FER EN TIA TED INS TR UC TIO N ~,,J FOR STRUGGLING READERS GlJ"u ie~ dli~ '-ii: rea ~ Targeted Passage [lines 239 -252] FOR ENG LIS H LAH studerit\,1~1 Language: Verb Ten ses. AS_,.,eve rb 51, r Thie; n::ic: c-,~~. ,.., Aplane releasing fi re retardant on the blaze 1:'..:...... ,.. ~ 'J'~..... covered the quarter-mile slope in about two minutes, hitting its top speed of , o 18 mph in the dried-out Gambel oak. The next question was why it had done that. Fire behavior is determined by an incredibly complicated interaction of fuel, terrain, and wind, and there are '.11athematical models describing the interaction. (The models are programmed into hand-held calculators carried by most incident commanders these days.) c·~~MMOH.... _.-w CORE RI 4 Th~deadly hillside faced west at a 33 ro 50 percent slope, and the vegetation Language Coach ~ It possessed burning characteristic s described in a formula called Fuel Multiple Meanings Kiodd Number Four. The moisture content of the small dead fuels on Storm Some words have specialized meanings. 0 ~g tountain was around 3 percent. And the live Gambel oak (which had A model is usually a !lfJ W ~d een pa~dy burned earlier) was several times drier than normal. In a light small version of a larger fo fl, according to this model, those conditions would produce twenty-three - object. What does it 01 atnes d' mean in line 273? {Line Th , sprea mg at a maximum of seven hundred feet an hour. 276 gives a clue.) In in wi~~s a rnanageable fire, or at least one that can be outrun, but an increase line 287.front means Oess th speed can change the situation dramatically. At 7 :20 r.M. on Tuesday "boundary between issued ~Rtwenty-four hours before the blowup), the National Weather Service different air masses." a ed Fl " fi thunder ag Ire warning for the area around Glenwood Springs. Dry What does front usually. storrns w.. mean? Winds gu. ere expected the following morning, followed by southwest afi tern000 Sttng U 3.. P_to O mph. A cold front would come through someume that ' SW1ng1ng t h e winds · to the northwest. BLOWU P : WHAT W E NT WRO N G AT STORM KING MO UN TAl:-1 567