100 Fires Project

Incredible undertaking between the Interagency Hotshot Crew community and The Wildland Firefighter Foundation to educate people on historic and notable fires

From the project website:

This project, and a few old hotshot superintendents behind it, intend to build a timeline of the 100 fires that every wildland firefighter should know about.

These fires tell the history of wildfire in this country; these fires shaped the evolution of the wildland fire service; and finally these fires claimed many lives... we want to honor those lives and carry those hard earned lessons forward.

With any such "timeline" there will need to be a set of criteria to decide which events to include. We realize that any timeline has a subjective element to it and not everyone will agree with every event included or excluded. This is not a timeline of the "biggest fires" or even the "most important" fires. It is, however, a timeline of fires that meet one or more of these criteria: was historically significant; made a notable impact across the wildland fire service; caused three or more wildland firefighter fatalities by entrapment; caused a civilian mass casualty event; or caused a hotshot crew member line of duty death.

This 100 Fires Project has been a collaborative effort with the Interagency Hotshot Crew community. The Wildland Firefighter Foundation has graciously agreed to host the project timeline on their website. This project is a work in progress; some of the fires on the list do not yet have summaries written for them.