Wildfire
Saturday, July 5th, 2008
At Madison junction I noticed new growth of lodgepole pines interspersed by the eerie charred remains of their predecessors that were consumed by the wildfires of 1988. At the time, Armageddon has fallen, eating up more than half of Yellowstone. There were over 25,000 firefighters and thousands of soldiers were called in to help the civilian crews. Smoke columns from the park became visible as far as 500 miles away, and ash fell over 100 miles away.
To emphasize the immensity of the ‘88 wildfires, Dan Sholly, Chief Ranger, of Yellowstone NP noted that - “All the land features – rivers, canyons, meadows – that usually stop a forest fire’s progress were proving to be worthless. This was a barbarian of a forest fire – ruthless and unpredictable.” He continued in saying that - “Every single one of our predictions had turned out to be wrong, as well as those of five of the top fire-behavior specialists in the world. The problem was that no one had ever seen fire behavior like this before. The book on projecting wildfire was seemingly being re-written by Satan himself.”
