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Show 81 Chapter Six. The August Inferno The Chief of the United States Forest Service described 1979 as one of the viorst f i r e seasons on record. By the end of the f i r st week of August, major fires were burning in Montana, California, Wyoming, Oregon and Nevada. The most violent fires blazed in Idaho, where i t seemed to some people that half the state was going up in flames. At Gallagher Peak ^0 miles northwest of Idaho Falls, a f i r e which began after a lightning strike on July 6 exploded into fury at the beginning of August, vihen high winds pushed i t out of control. Fire crews struggled to dig lines around i t s 36,000 acres. At the same time the Ship Island f i r e , vihere the crevi member had been killed when he couldn't keep hold of his fire shelter, spread to 10,000 acres. Just 30 miles south of Ship Island, a far worse f i r e was raging at Mortar Creek along the Salmon River, close to where Janey MdDowell had guarded Jimmy Carter on his presidential v i s i t . "There's no force on earth powerful enough to cope with what we're seeing here," said Gordon Stevens, fire boss on the Mortar Creek f i r e . He added, "Nature will have to do her thing" to put out the f i r e by sending rain. But Nature had other ideas. In the following days humidity dropped as 35-mile-an-hour viinds sprang up to whip the flames. 2,000 weary men and viomen who had been fighting the f i r e for days were joined by 500 fresh crew members flown in from the Southern s t a t e s . Only ten "burned |