By John N. Maclean
National Geographic, July 3, 2014
The South Canyon Fire killed 14 firefighters and changed how wildfires are fought. Then last year in Arizona, tragedy struck again.
Read MoreInterview with John N. Maclean
New Asian Writing, January 1, 2014
John Maclean was a writer, editor, and reporter for the Chicago Tribune for 30 years before he resigned his job there in 1995 to write Fire on the Mountain. Maclean was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1943, the second of two children. An avid fly-fisherman, Maclean divides his time between his residence in Washington, D.C. and the Maclean family cabin in Montana. He is the award-winning author of three previous books on wildfire disasters and his latest, The Esperanza Fire, is available now.
Read MoreBy John Maclean
Originally published by High Country News in July 2013
Tough questions are being raised about the deaths of 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots in Arizona's Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30. They were physically fit, highly trained young men, and they deployed emergency shelters in hellish temperatures that likely topped 1,200 degrees Farenheit. The burns and suffocation killed them, but were mistakes and bad policy also at fault?
Read MoreBy John N. Maclean
Essay originally published in High Country News, September 9, 2008 in their “Writers on the Rage” series
Behind daily headlines about bigger and more costly wildland fires, the firefighting community has been sweating out the issue of criminal liability for serious mistakes made on the fireline.
Read MoreForeword by John N. Maclean, for Stephen J Pine’s Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910
Stephen J. Pyne's Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910, first published in 2001, was reissued in 2008 by Mountain Press in Missoula. The book contains a new foreword by Maclean in which he recounts the story of the 2007 Jocko Lakes Fire, which nearly took his cabin and the town of Seeley Lake, and analyzes the role the 1910 fires continue to play today.