---

 

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from
The De-Greening of America,
Part IV: Fire

Michael Ceraolo

Peshtigo.

“It is as though
you attempted to resist the approach
of an avalanche of fire hurled against you”

October 8, 1871
Slash
burned to clear land for farming
Small fires set to clear away brush
Sawdust and waste at the lumber mills
Debris resting along railroad right-of-ways
ignited by sparks from those passing trains
Every structure made of wood
And a summer-long drought . . .

Al
ready on this day to be whipped by high winds,
estimated at 15-40 MPH
with gusts up to twice that,
whipped
into a raging conflagration,
a roar
that sounded like thunder as it moved,
with
small fires whirling ahead of the main blaze
faster than a human could walk,
dropping fine embers from the sky
like a snowstorm as hose fires
whirled back in on themselves,
and
drew even more fuel and heated gases in . . .

This was possibly the first known instance of a firestorm,
the phenomenon that seemed to create its own weather,
a phenomenon remarked upon at the time,
then forgotten,
then ‘re-discovered’
seventy-some years later during the bombings of World War II:

“great balls of fire from the sky . . .
like a mighty sky rocket explosion
with a brilliant display of flashing light”

which
may have killed as many as 2,200 people
in Peshtigo and the surrounding area
(an exact count impossible because
of immigration since the previous year’s census,
the number of transients in the area
for work purposes at the time,
and other factors),
and
definitely destroyed a billion trees
over an area of 2,400 square miles . . .

And
this great blaze has been largely unknown
(outside of Wisconsin),
because
it occurred the same day as the Great Chicago Fire
two hundred and sixty-two miles to the south,
a tragedy
that killed three hundred people
And,
where noted at all,
it’s said that this fire caused less property damage
than the Chicago fire,
under
the perverse economic logic that considers
a tree that has been murdered,
cut up,
and
then re-assembled into other structures
to be much more valuable than one that
continues to function as the lungs of the planet,
logic
that prevails to this day
(see: the notion of ‘development’,
and
the continued reverence for ‘developers’)------





The Big Burn.

Or The Big Blowup
Or The Great Idaho Fire
(even though Washington and Montana were also affected)
Or The Fire of 1910
The largest fire in American history,
more than 5,000 square miles over those three states

Man’s part in it:

ampfires
backfires
(the origin of the phrase fighting fire with fire?)
sparks from passing trains,
even arson

Nature’s part in it:

several months with almost no rain
dry lightning strikes causing some fires,
and,
most of all,
the Palouser,
a wind
that cascaded down the mountains and up the valleys
like an amusement park ride,
except
that it was real, not faux, danger,
especially
in certain conditions

And
August 20,1910
those conditions prevailed:
said Palouser blew,
and
condensed a few thousands small fires
into one epic conflagration
“I was frightening,
as what seemed to be great flakes of white snow
were swirling to the ground in e heat and darkness of high noon”
“It would have been the most beautiful sight
had one not realized that in the next moment
you might be caught in its fiery folds”

and
between one hundred and two hundred people,
most of them firefighters,
lost their lives in the blaze

But
that would not be the fire’s greatest impact;
that would be a mindset change that would stay in place
for most of the next century:

“Forest fires are preventable”
except
where they weren’t,
and,
especially,
where they were necessary for a healthy ecosystem;
wildfire firefighting would become the embodiment
of William James’ moral equivalent of war,
with
a military command structure for the firefighters
and even aerial bombardment of the fire
with water and chemicals for suppression,
all of this leading,
paradoxically,
to more and bigger fires because
the small fires were snuffed out quickly
and thus left more fuel for the bigger fires,
and
because the knowledge that fire,
any fire,
would be attacked aggressively,
led people to build in ever more marginal areas,
which
led to ever more fires,
and so on,
in a vicious circle

(And the destructive fires in your backyard,
no matter where you live)-------




June 22, 1969.

More than forty years ago today
my town brought clean water into play
by having floes of fire float on filthy water

(Interactive part of the poem:
Insert
your favorite adage about turning points
HERE)

In this instance
the truism was indeed true:
hundreds of blazes on bodies of water
of all shapes and sizes in lots of places
had occurred during the decades of dumping
industrial effluent into those waters,
and
had not inspired action,
had not inspired mockery,
had not inspired anything except
more of the industrialism that caused them,
which
was taken as a sign of prosperity and progress

No notice had been taken by the nation’s media
until,
on this date
on the Cuyahoga River
in Cleveland, Ohio
a fire seared the collective conscience
(though,
ironically,
in those days before everyone and everything
was at the mercy of the photographer hordes,
no pictures were taken of the small fire,
and
the media resorted to one of its standbys,
using
file footage and photos from the much more damaging fire
of 1952)
This led to laws being passed,
however selectively enforced,
and
thus to whatever halting progress toward
less pollution,
clean water,
peaceful co-existence
has been made as of today,
though
some want to take even that away
(see
the free-market fundamentalists who believe
that since the free market created the problem
only the free market can solve the problem,
and
advance the once and future ‘idea’
of buying and selling the ‘right’ to pollute),
though
in the interim they don’t refuse the benefits
of what they profess to despise:
drinking the now-clean water,
boating in the now-clean water,
catching fish that have returned to the now-clean water,
fire
indirectly leading to these desired results------

 

    The Internet versions of this poem
do not have the proper indentations
in lines, the way the author originally
released this poem. For the proper
indentations, see the print version
of the November 2011 issue (v226)
of cc&d magazine.

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