Everlasting Fire Fighting Danger

We've recently lamented the tragedy of Justin Beebe, a wildland firefighter member of the Lolo Hotshot Crew who died while fighting a fire in Nevada. A falling tree killed Beebe, 26, who had been with the crew just seven months, on Aug. 13, 2016.

Falling snags have been a firefighter killer ever since the beginning of wildland fire suppression.

Seeley Lake has its own story about a similar tragedy almost 70 years ago about six miles as the crow flies up Rice Ridge.

Frank "Stubby" Moore was killed there in 1949 while fighting a forest fire. It was at night, someone yelled a warning that a snag was falling and Stubby ran, but ran under the snag. Stubby Moore was an 18-year-old firefighter in his first season as a forest firefighter. He was going to school in Missoula and had a paper route. His older brother Bud Moore describes the incident:

"He hired on to the Forest Service as a firefighter. He was 18 I think. He went out on his first summer. He fought fires all summer, all the early part of the summer. They attacked, his crew attacked the fire on Rice Ridge out of Seeley and he was hit by a snag. It was in the night. They were mopping up. Just holding it for the night. Snag burned off and came down and hit him. Killed him. As an aftermath of that, they went up later and put up a nice sign there along the trail where Stub was killed. So that set there for awhile. Still to this day I haven't been up there."

Later... "We got to talking about the fire. Stub came up and I said, "Yeah, that was my brother." So that was the first anybody knew of it, at least in recent times. Maggie Doherty, she said, "Well we have a new sign made. The sign up there is all faded and chewed. We'll give you the old sign." So one day Maggie and Bruce, they came over with the old sign. I've got it in the (office) all chewed up and covered with grizzly hair where they'd been rubbing."

When the family was finishing Stubby's graveside service, his older brother Bud Moore was approached and informed by his assistant "Say, something big has happened over there on the Helena..." That was the first Bud learned the Mann Gulch disaster had occurred.

Great lengths have been taken to make wildland firefighting as safe as possible. But anytime anyone is within or along the fireline, they know there's always that one snag that can be devastating.