Indigenous Ability

In August of 1937 lighting struck some dry tinder in Yellowstone National Park. The fire started small but via a long slow crawl eventually grew to become known as the infamous Blackwater Fire. The Blackwater Fire eventually consumed 1,700 acres and took the lives of 15 firefighters. After Blackwater the US Forest service came to the conclusion that the only way to combat such fires was to somehow get an advance team to the fire before it grew to monumental proportions. The ideas was to take an elite cadre of firefighters who not only knew the ins and outs of dealing with conflagration, but who had skills in backcountry survival, woodcraft, and who could parachute from a plane.  After the planning stages were thought over and a few initial trials were made these small units were tested in a literal trial by fire when on July 12, 1940 the first official aerial unit of firefighters were employed on the Marten Creek Fire in Idaho’s Nez Perce National Forest These sma...