The first one I read was The Fire Line, by Fernanda Santos and the second one was Granite Mountain, by the only survivor of the crew Brendan McDonough.
The Fire Line was... quite factual. In terms of what happened at the fire line where the crew died. But I think 1/3 of the book was background and profile stories of some of the crew members, especially the superintendent Eric Marsh (whose decision, ultimately, led to the deaths of his crew). All were painted in good light, naturally.
Brendan’s book was, well, very personal. More like personal anecdotes I guess. All of the crew, of course, were described to be nothing but flawless and impeccable.
What these two books painted was a picture of Eric Marsh that was beyond reproach. He sounded like a good man, a person who invested in others, who believed in his crew and all-around a great firefighter and leader.
Then came On The Burning Edge.
I wasn’t gonna buy and read another granite mountain book because really, there’s no conclusion to why the men died. In the end, it’s been concluded that it would be never understood why the men left the safety of black (burnt out area) to go into a box canyon where they ultimately died because there are no living survivors. So there really was no point reading another book.
But, I had a long two-day weekend haha and needed to kill time coz I didn’t want to think about Hoshino, so i decided to buy the book.
On the Burning Edge is turning out to be quite different from the other two books.
I’ve not finished it yet but it is telling a lot more untold stories of the crew leading up to the deadly fire.
I think what I found interesting about it was its focus more on the temporary superintendent, Stead, and not on Marsh.
It’s very interesting to see how the book talked about Stead’s style of management as opposed to Marsh and also the fact that was not revealed in the other two books that it was Stead that had been leading the crew more in the months leading to the deadly fire.
I think this is significant because basically the crux of the incident and the unresolved question that led to the deaths of the crew was basically what happened between Marsh and Stead.
Basically, before the entrapment, Stead and the crew were safe in the black, while Marsh was scouting.
It still remains a mystery why the crew ended up in the box canyon where they died and also, no one else fighting the fire even knew where Granite Mountain was.
It’s been debated and there has been no conclusion what happened between Stead, whom the crew was with and Marsh, and what happened between the both of them that led to the crew following Marsh’s command to get out of the black and into the deadly box canyon.
So, this book On the Burning Edge, was actually really good in illustrating the difference in leadership style between Marsh and Stead. It’s also really interesting that this book brought to light that the new rookies were basically more used to working with Stead than with Marsh.
On top of that, I had no idea that, actually, the deadly Yarnell Fire where the crew died was actually Marsh first fire with the crew for that season.
The other two books totally didn’t show that Marsh was completely absent from the crew that whole season, so basically, the current crew was actually more accustomed to working with Stead, not Marsh.
I think this is a very crucial piece of information in order to understand objectively the dynamics that might have doomed the crew.
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