The Story Behind the Yellowstone Fires of 1988 | Retro Report | The New York Times
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- Summer of Fire: The lessons learned from the summer of 1988 when fires burned nearly one third of Yellowstone National Park continue to shape the way we fight wildfires raging across the West today.
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The Story Behind the Yellowstone Fires of 1988 | Retro Report | The New York Times
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Neat how this video shows perfectly how the media n general public have no clue what they're talking about but the people that live and work there do.
That’s basically every retro report. In fact, that’s probably every major news story too
love the part when he says where is Gaddafi when you need him ha ha
I thought that was what he said lol !!
Scrolled down to comments just to see if anyone else enjoyed or caught that.
IKR!!?
"I kept hoping maybe Gadafi would do something outrageous but he didn't"
lol
I went to Yellowstone during these fires. Intending to stay there for about a week. After 3 days we had to evacuate but the fires surrounded our escape road. We sat for 5 hours on the side of the mountain with 12 other cars while firemen watered down a pathway. We had to drive through a raging inferno with two fire trucks one at the front end one at the end of the caravan shooting water at the side of the roads to get us out.
Harrowing experience that I still remember to this day.
Geez, what a scary experience ChaD, so happy you, your family and the others made it out safely.
A wildfire is the natural way of receding a forest that gets too big. They also facilitate the release of seeds from pine cones and other seed pods due to the intense heat.
However, scheduled and well executed control burns are great ways to help this process.
MacDaddy635
Not in a national park.
Why not?
I somewhat hear what you are saying, but Germany is less than the size of Montana for example (with over 80 times the population), and much of the area in NPS and USFS land is extremely rugged and remote, making it impossible for just anyone to go out and clean up a section of the forest. This leaves the prospect of thinning as part of a logging operation. At issue there are the cost to benefit. It's expensive to build and maintain long miles of logging roads, and not profitable for logging companies to merely thin remote tracts of forest and pull out underbrush without taking large trees, or just clear cutting. This would then require the USFS or NPS to subsidize logging operation and operate at a loss, and I'm not sure there's the will of taxpayers to fund such a concept.
Terry K Germany has 120,000 sq km of forested land. The United States as 3 million sq km.
Couldn't agree more.
I grew up in that area. Was in Cheyenne Wyoming when the '88 fire occurred. The smoke made the noon dau sun seem like twilight. It was heartbreaking to see the charred remains after the fire. But I visited the park in 2008, recovery was well on its way after just 30 years. Still the most beautiful part of this world to me.
I’ve lived through tornadoes (so many I can’t count), earthquakes (though not major), hurricanes (including Katrina) and the 2016 Gatlinburg wildfire.
Wildfire terrifies the living daylights out of me.
Agreed. At least our snow can be plowed or just wait for the spring melt!
Wow, it’s almost like fires
Are unpredictable
Botanical succession is not exactly a mainstream topic taught in schools but is both necessary yet feared because one of its principle agents is fire.
BlueBaron3339 I remember in when I was elementary school, we had some people come in and speak to us about forest fires and we even had a whole lesson on how naturally occurring fires can be beneficial for plant growth and ecosystems. I thought and still think that it was interesting. Nature is awesome!!
don't see why they can't do planned and controlled burns instead of leaving it up to the whims of nature. mind you our climate is different so naturally occurring wildfires aren't a thing.
Naturaly occuring fires are always a thing
In California it gets taught quite a bit. All of my cousins and siblings throughout the state know how wildfires work and how fires are an essential part of the life cycle.
Your right, i had to take natural disaster electives in college to hear this in school.
I grew up in Portland, OR not many fires there
what really happened was that yogi bear dropped his mixtape
Leafy_Cynical your profile picture did me a heart attack.
Spin Doctors mix tape I believe.
I bet one of the songs on it is the Smokey Bear Diss Track.
@@sparkieemae atleast it didn't fly
that's lit
There is a recurring theme in the discussion and study of natural processes like wildfires, coastal flooding, inland flooding and even infection and disease: suppression can and does reduce frequency, but inevitably leads to greater catastrophic events when suppression measures are inevitably breached. Not to say that suppression is always bad. Just be aware that it will never be the final word.
Smart dude
I can kinda say that covid is a wild fire that needs to be LIGHTLY NOT HEAVILY retained as its not that serious
@@blackopscw7913 Yeah, not until you or your family dies from it. Science doesn’t care how ignorant you are: Just keep watching that Fox Propaganda and as Tucker (followed by a string of “middle names”) Carlson said, “We’re in the entertainment business, we’re just entertainers. If people want to believe the ridiculous well, that’s their choice.”
@@blackopscw7913 A virus is *NOT* like a fire. It can mutate and go back to reinfect/re-burn the same terrain over, and over again.
Watching how quickly those flames moved was incredibly scary...
I have been their multiple times and its as beautiful as ever. Nature is wonderful .
4:35 *LMFAO* That was when Gaddafi was super loco...
i remember this, i was 7, it happened a few months after we visited the previous summer. i was so worried about the animals and i was upset that all the stuff i'd just seen was gone. idk why no one told me that forests GROW BACK
I wanted to add most of the fires started and burned in very rermote areas. If you have never been to Yellowstone you have no idea what it is like
It's still a beautiful place. Even in the burn scared areas where the burned trees weren't fell it's stunning.
You guys should make a video on the 2003 cedar fire. It completely changed California fire response & destroyed hundreds of home largely due to government bureaucracy. I'm biased because it burned my house down on live tv and my family lost everything, but it legitimately was objectively historic.
It helps the soil, adding minerals, and clears out trees and brush that need to be removed, so nature takes its course.
I'm retired from the U.S. Forest Service and I was in Yellowstone in 1988 for 5 weeks as a crew boss for a military fire crew from Ft. Lewis, Washington. We were assigned to the North Fork Fire, which burned in the western portion of the park and west onto the Targhee National Forest. It was the largest fire in the park that year, at some 475,000 acres. This was a human caused fire that started when a firewood cutter on the national forest tossed a cigarette on the ground. Full and immediate fire suppression action was taken on this fire, which started about about a month to six weeks after all the rest of the fires had started (by lightning). In spite of the immediate action taken on it, it was the largest fire of that season. This fact was left out of this video and is often left out of videos, news reports and articles written for magazines and newspapers.
Research has shown that large areas of Yellowstone burn all at once about every 300-500 years. The other crew bosses and our strike team leader concluded that just by looking at the park"s trees when we first arrived. This was a natural event and vital for the park's resources to remain in balance.
I was one of the Ft. Lewis soldiers that volunteered for that duty. We may have met.
In Australia we get fires all the time, and our main way of controlling them is "back burning", controlled burning in winter to clear underbrush and create fire breaks. One of the reasons why the bushfire were so bad this year was because there was little safe window to backburn as winter was very warm and dry.
I thought everyone in Australia had been given a free cremation last year! It seemed like the whole continent spontaneously combusted.
Seriously, glad you survived to at least explain a little more about how that horrible fire season came about. Please take care and thank you.
I have been to the park before and after and the fire, its as beautiful as ever. Fire is just part of nature. What some may not realize is Yellowstone is a big tourist destination and fuels the local economy. Some people may not have found the park so wonderful after the fire. I am not one of those people as I knew it would make a come back. I can understand some not loving it soon after the fire.
the sf bay area has to deal with wildfire all the time with the miles of hills of dry grass that surround nearly every city- the town where i live has a good chunk of homes backed up to these hills. every so often firefighters do controlled burns of the brush to keep it down, but what's great is that there's a service called goats-r-us that rotates a herd of goats around the city, and they eat the grass to keep it short. it makes everyone happy (especially the goats)
I love that! (the goats :))
Do you live in Lafayette?
We will remember you Paradise, California
“Wildfire” emphasis on “wild”. Nature does that.
Lodgepole pines cannot propagate without fire and Yellowstone is largely covered by lodgepole. We now have a wondeful young forest growing up in place of what burned. Necessary fires occur like this when there is too much deadfall and the forest is too dense.
Well said.
its means the fire is in the wild, tell me then how do nature in the forest start a fire?
@@McShag420 you have to explain as well to poeple who dont know Pine trees which I assume same family are flammable and produce aggresive fire and if you smell a cut pine tree wood its smells like its been soaked with gasoline.
@@asahel980 Lightening strikes. And they get a LOT of lightening storms.
I was there, family vacation when I was 5. Amazing memories. On the same trip a kangaroo escaped from a zoo,, and my mom saw it and she was called nuts until the news reported it.
I did some control burns last year while studying dendrology. Fires are crucial to a forest’s survival.
snow in september sounds more impressive to me than the fire itself actually... how do you guys deal with that climate up there?
Heck, I say that if you build your house in the middle of a forest, you buy fire insurance and accept the fact that your entire home might burn down at anytime. But seriously, don't build your house in the middle of a forest!
EDIT: I have to edit this and say that also climate change is making these wildfires worse and more frequent, and maybe the fossil fuel companies should stop spilling millions of tons of oil and carbon into the ocean and the air.
Agreed! I never understand why people are shocked when that happens to them.
Or at least manage the type of vegetation and fuel around your house and maintain a fuel free perimeter. Have an emergency plan and lots of sprinklers ready for when you may need it
@@imJamesF Im sorry but, always makes me laugh on National TV when a man in a fire state puts on his yard sprinklers before he leaves like that would hold back fire like you would need way more PSI 🤣😂
Or on the edge of a hill or mountain where earthquakes and landslides are repeat events. I’m fed up with subsidizing your idiocy. Claims on these kinds of natural events should be limited to ONE. After that, you’re on your own. If you can afford for example your own private fire protection, you can afford to insure your property out of your own pocket.
California knows this too well. 2017 was a hard year.
You can say that again this year
I was there for “The Seige of 87!” I thought THAT was bad....
2018 was worse.
Maybe they should allow fire management and it wouldn’t have been so bad
Present day today guys
Snow in September, on the 11th. Got more of my attention than anything else.
Humans.. We can predict rain... We can predict weather... We can predict fires... We can predict natural disasters... We can predict what hits our planet from space.....
Meanwhile: We CAN’T PREDICT ANY OF IT!!
We’d have more accurate “predictions” from Madame Cleo and her crystal ball on the boardwalk.
Excellent video about a complicated subject. One could study this fire, the West Fork Complex Fire, the Yarnell Fire, the Canyon Creek Complex Fire, the the Cedar Fire etc. and draw far reaching conclusions, or no conclusion at all.
The only consensus I can glean is that we went through a half century of excessive fire suppression, followed by a couple decades of over logging with little mechanical thinning, followed by a few more decades of environmental extremism in some areas, coupled with complexities from global warming that are still unknown (but definitely exist, I'm no naysayer), or how to actually plan for it in the years and decades to come when "bad fire year" becomes the norm for every year.
CalFire's director recently noted that the $150m budget his group recently received (an increase), pales in comparison to the $180 BILLION cumulative cost of fires in 2017 for the state. But no one wants to pay more taxes for fire prevention. So we continue to learn the hard way. Someone else's home, town, park, etc. are destroyed, therefore it's someone else's problem, we selfishly, short shortsightedly think.
Your comment made me think about the strange economics of fighting fires: if a house is saved the insurance companies pay nothing to the fire services that saved all the wood houses in a forest, the tax payers pay for it. It seems like the insurance industry is basically having their assets protected for free in a weird way. Hope this makes sense..
You can tell from how dry it is that it isn't going to be good
inspiring video
Controled burning is very important. They used to do that back in the day!
Way back in the day, before the area was settled, the burns were uncontrolled. Yet the forest was thriving.
I was there... near Cooke(d) City and Silver (Cinder) Gate. The Angeles National Forest sent two engine strike teams (10 engines) to the park. Point being that the whole country got involved in suppressing those fires at the expense of their own needs.
I am going there this summer
Shane Kahnke how was the trip? Lmao
Love the Gadaffi comment. Too funny and so honest.
Wildlifes are part of nature but in area where ppl live controlled burns are needed imagine the fires that happen millions of years ago
Wow this is so sad
yes it is
Granted, an older video, but illustrative of the MSMs penchant for sensationalism over facts. Case in point: 0:40 re: "The Rim Fire." The video is about the 1988 Yellowstone Park fire. Yellowstone Park is located mostly in Wyoming, but also includes parts of Idaho and Montana. The 1988 Yellowstone fire would have to have been massive indeed to have spread to "parts of Yosemite...", which is located in California, somewhere around 1000 miles away!
Who would win?
A fire in 1988 in Yellowstone
Or
One rainy boi
*A cold boy.
@@Jhon47807 *A snow boy.
I was there and got run out of the Park by a ranger who ran toward us yelling you have to leave by the west exit of the park now !
yeah nice
Later, California would become a hells cape of fire.
The world's tallest and oldest tree is at Sequioia National Park in CA. The state is "passionate" with wildfires. The coastal redwood trees never get burned. Not even once.
Nah. What happened is that Smokey accidently brought a match to start a campfire and dropped it on a tree when he was a cub.
I love my Christmas trees!!
That Nero comment is a little funny. Even though it's common belief that he fiddled while Rome burned, he actively helped provide aid during the fire. Kind of ironic.
Remember those horrible fires at the beginning of 2020? The fires would have happened regardless, the only reason people got hurt was housing encroaching on nature. In other words, it’s our fault.
Around 1900 we instituted a 100% extinguishment policy. This led to forest getting overgrown and creating ladder fuels, etc. We are now suffering the results of this, huge wildfires every year. This will continue to happen until the forest begin to look like they used to, getting burned out and recycled.
Here after the california wild fires in 2020
I like this guy but hes still got his sense of humor
I made a once-in-a-lifetime 1991 trip to Yellowstone to take Kodachrome photographs. What I found was a cinder. Still have those ugly slides.
Time to go back.
Kodachrome! I bet those pix are beautiful!I hope you hold on to them and keep them in the family or donate them to a library. You have a great record of history there for photographers and the general public in the future. Take care my friend-and take care of those pix ;-)
And now due to so much rain, Yellowstone is closed once again because of flooding 😭
I am bitter. They let the Black Mountain fire burn all summer in 2003 until it blew up. We were evacuated just as the fire jumped the ridge over our house.
30 years later still no trees in 90% of the burnt areas
It takes time for trees to grow back after large fires. The problem is we wouldn’t have these large forest destroying fires if we let the small fires do their business. However because for so long our policy was to put out ALL fire our forests are ripe for the burning.
Fire cleanses all
I’m watching while the camp fires are burning in Southern California and now they’re saying it’s the worst fire in SoCal history
Until the fires this year, 2021.
There is a fire! Let's set a fire!
Now the amazon rainforest is now burning
@ 9:23 Sko Buffs!
Bruh the fire has ended on September 11
Nature will operate in spite of us. When will we learn?
We won’t. Eventually I’ve come to a resigned acceptance of our collective idiocy.
Okey dokey smokey.. like a meteorite
Went there today and there are still dead trees EVERYWHERE there are green ones but its like its trying so hard to rebuild. Its a Mess still. The National wonders was still Amazing to see. 😀
For a project...
1:58 - "All models went out the window."
4:00 - "Why don't you just put it out? Well, why don't you just stop a hurricane - with a tornado?"
Restoration - 8:00
"Every plant had a strategy built into its genetics." 8:37
It will 2 to 300 years for the lodgepole pine trees to grow back to their full height." 10:08
Fires are nature's way of cleaning house 😊.
Sad that people would blame an unstoppable natural disaster on 1 guy because of their own ignorance
People always want someone to blame
FireWatch :D the game.
Hello future peoples
+George George My thoughts exactly. Good old Forrest Byrnes.
+George George Nice on Steam Game :D
FireWatch has inspired my English creative piece 3😂
grow up
On Sept 11................ Interesting
As advanced as our civilization is, we are still completely and utterly at the whim of nature
Snow in September? What a strange climate! The first flurry in an average area that's neither desert, tropical nor subtropical befalls in late November (around Thanksgiving).
Yellowstone sits at the end of the snake river plane. It funnels in snow and rain from the pacific l. It gets more snow then most places get in the us
hello
hello
So basically all this news reporting was entirely pointless...?
We were camped there in June. I seem to remember three small fires burning on the ridge above the campground. It was stupid. Trust your so-called models instead of your common sense.
Fires are do have in forest some tree can’t grow new trees with out fire
Who else came here from Firewatch?
🐲 the Year of the Dragon 1988🐉
“Just put it out”😀 okay, mhm. Very good.
I went to Yellowstone probably 7 years ago when I was probably 10 or younger and an old woman talked to me about how Yellowstone changed. She told me that all the trees there used to be green but are now dead. It's sad stuff to see old people have to experience the change that happened there.
How do you know about these things about yellow natural park?🧐
This would be meaningful if the forest were burning in socal, but its actually the houses that are burning, so this is a diversion.
Don't build houses in the forest. Simple enough. I love Nature, too, but if build in the wrong place, Nature may take your house.
Yup same with flood plains, I have no sympathy for these folks.
If only they knew about all the fires that are happening now...
. . . at a boy New York Times . . .
It looked good when we visited last month and all the creatures were out. Lakes looked awesome and the mountains were snow covered. To many uneducated people making assumptions. GO FIGURE
No wonder the media has lost all credibility
Exactly. The Amazon will come back strong as ever
And maybe help the ozone
What happened in the amazon wasn't wildfires, it was "controlled" man made burning to clear the forest so it could be used for farming.
The Amazon does not get natural fires so it has not adapted to it so it will not grow back
@@TheDundeeBiscuitLuvU well that's just bullcrap. I mean them setting fires. Why would someone be sooo stupid
@@lawlor2925 so it can be used for farming, like I just said.
@@TheDundeeBiscuitLuvU you don't set fires to farm. You backo them. That's why I just said why would you set fires? That's stupid cuz you can't contain something like that
I mean yeah, it will regrow but they didnt have to let that town burn, or whatever it was.
No town burned in the Yellowstone fires. They were referring to the town of Yarnell that burned in 2013 in AZ which also killed 19 of the 20 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshot Crew.
@@lorinavrodtzke8932 And I remember criticism that the firefighters were put in danger unnecessarily because there was too much emphasis on protecting property.
Moral of the story: the public should educate themselves and not interfere with experts
And what saved old faithful inn ??? Wasn't the firefighters the fire leapt over the main fire caused by its own wind
who else came because of english
From the same folks that brought us Vietnam !
this video is published by NYT channel, and my first though is 'wonder how they manipulated and distorted this story?'
soooooooooooooooooooooo 😂
everything in the universe gets recycled. even your rotten soul.
The wildlife might have been killed by the wildfire. Start all over in breeding to the habitat.