Extreme Wildfire - an interview with Mark Thiessen

Fire Prevention Week is October 9 - 15

Teachers and safety educators can find free resources and downloads at the National Fire Protection Association website. 

Today I am pleased to offer a brief interview with Mark Thiessen, 

photographer and author of  Extreme Wildfire, published by National Geographic Kids, 2016.

Extreme Wildfire is a holistic view of wildfires—including scientific, historical, personal, tactical, and ecological aspects—and of course, there are the fantastic photos.

Photo by Mark Thiessen  © National Geographic

LT: Considering the danger and importance of fighting wildfires, I'm shocked that the training period for wildland firefighters is only five days!  Did you really feel prepared after only five days of training?

MT: You might call the five days of training “survival training”. It's basically everything you need to know so you won’t get yourself killed. Don’t try to outrun a fire going up hill, or always know where your escape route is and your safety zone. It’s 4 days of classroom instruction followed by practicing to deploy your fire shelter, and finally a practice fire. But certainly not enough to know how to fight a wildfire. That is learned on the job. Only a few rookies are added to a crew every year and they train with them leading up to fire season. It’s a great honor and they only accept the best of the best. The first task is fire training to get your “red card”.
The first time a rookie experiences the drudgery of digging line is when they work their first practice fire. To contain a wildfire you need to remove the vegetation along the fires perimeter down to mineral soil, a path about 2 ft wide. This is hard, back breaking work and even harder until you learn the technique. I will never forget a young, gung-ho rookie as we dug fire line on our practice fire. He was thoroughly exhausted after only 30 minutes of digging line. On the ride back to town he sat silent, he had that “50 ft. stare in a 10 ft. room” look about him. I knew what he was thinking, “What have it got myself into? How can I dig line all day, all summer long, when I can’t even do it for 30 minutes?”

LT: There are few people I know who would not want to be a National Geographic photographer.  On the other hand, knowing many firefighters, I can also understand that you've been "bit by the fire bug."  You've been very fortunate to combine two of your great interests.  If all things were equal financially, and you had to choose between photographer and firefighter, which would you choose?

MT: For many reasons, I would still like to do what I’m doing now, which is a photographer telling the story of fire. First you have the fire which moves like its alive and at times it's very beautiful. Next you have the firefighters who love the outdoors, love adventure and I want to show what it's like from the inside. Finally you have the issues of people moving into natural areas where fire has been the dominant player since the last ice age. It's not an matter of if wildfire is going to hit an area but when.  Not to mention firefighting is very hard work.

LT: You wrote of having flame retardant dropped on you from a plane. What special measures do you take to protect your equipment?

MT: It’s extremely dry and dusty out west during fire season. I’m afraid there isn’t much I can do to protect my equipment other than wipe it down at the end of the day and try to blow the dust off of it. The biggest problem is getting dust on my camera sensor when I change lenses. I can avoid this problem by having a camera body attached to each lens so I never have to change lenses. But no matter how hard I try, I still end up with dust inside my lenses.

LT: The goal of any writer, artist, or photographer is to evoke emotion.  What feeling do strive to create in your photos? Without a firefighter in the frame, how do you capture emotion?

MT: Fire is as beautiful as it is terrifying. And when you can anticipate the situation and get there when it’s going to happen, you just can’t take enough pictures of it. You end up in these other-wordly places. You’re in the middle of a forest with trees burning all around you – and it’s just magical. All of my favorite pictures all have this other-worldly feel to them. I hope to get into those situations where the light is doing things that it doesn’t normally do. I’m always drawn to photographing things where the light source is in the picture. So fire at night is a great opportunity for that.

LT: This final question was posed by my husband,  a veteran of as crusty a bunch of North Jersey firefighters as you're likely to meet! 😉When you are working as a photographer with a firefighting crew, do they accept you "into the fold?"  Do you share in the camaraderie?

 MT: Because I have been doing this for so long, I’ve developed a good reputation among firefighters. Yet I’m always working with crews for the first time. They can be a little “standoff-ish” at first. But after my first day with them, I call it “getting to know me day”, they see how I carry my self around fire and I earn their respect. After a week we are good friends, exchanging emails and becoming friends on Facebook. I also follow through on my promise to send them photos of themselves fighting fire.

LT: My thanks to Mark Thiessen, his publicist, and publisher!

From the National Geographic Store website:

Mark Thiessen has been a photographer with National Geographic since 1990. He is widely published in all areas of the National Geographic Society, including National Geographic magazine, National Geographic Adventure, and National Geographic Traveler. National Geographic books that feature Thiessen's work include Return to Midway, which documents the discovery of the U.S.S Yorktown, and Baseball as America, a look at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Note:

My copy of Extreme Wildfire was provided by the author's publicist 

Storm - a review

Napoli, Donna Jo. 2014. Storm. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Storm, told in first person, present tense prose, presents the story of the biblical flood through the eyes of 16-year-old Sebah, an unlikely stowaway aboard Noah's massive ark.

The story unfolds in chapters that correspond with the biblical timeline - 40 days of rain, 150 days for the waters to recede, 10 months until the mountains become visible, 40 days until the release of a bird, etc.
(All can be found in the 7th and 8th chapters of Genesis.)

After chronicling Sebah's three week struggle to survive the deluge with her companion Aban, the chapter titled, "Day 22," ends,

It's another creature.  Like the first, but larger.  And obviously male.  He perches in a round hole high in the side of the ship.  There is a line of such holes.  And I passed another line below as I climbed.
A whole ship of these creatures.
I think of letting go, disappearing into the sea. I let loose one hand and look down. The sea is far below. I feel the energy seep from me. It would be so easy to just give up.
...
The creature behind me nudges my dangling hand.
I reach for the male's hand, and I am half pulled, half shoved up through the hole and into the ship.

Ms. Napoli clearly put an enormous amount of thought into the logistics of preparing for a massive exodus of animals with little or no possibility of resupply for more than a year. She details the grueling work of the voyage.  While Sebah struggles to remain hidden and survive in the enclosure of the bonobos, Noah and his family have a huge responsibility to the ark's inhabitants. The animals must be secure from each other, their enclosures must be cleaned, they must be fed, they must have fresh water. Their survival is imperative. The family collects rainwater, they dry and ration supplies of fresh fruits and vegetables for the ark's herbivores, they fish to obtain fresh food for the carnivores. The family's nerves grow frayed under the stress.  They begin to argue and turn against one another.  The hidden Sebah sees much,

"Respect!" Noah claps his hands above his head, and dust flies through the dim light.  "And haven't you learned arguing gets us nowhere?"  He takes his ax back from Ham. "The bottom deck stinks.  I have to breathe shallow to stand going down there.  Everyone has to help Japheth and me clean it out.  Today! Let our wives feed and water the animals of this deck and the top —while we shovel waste.  Noah goes up the ladder with Japheth at his heels.

How you will perceive this book will depend greatly upon how you perceive the biblical story of the great flood. Arguments could be made for classification as historical fiction, alternative history, survival fiction, dystopian fiction, or fantasy. However you choose to view the book, it cannot be denied that it is a thought-provoking look at the nature of humans and animals, of loss and love, of despair and hope.

An Author's Note, Timeline from Genesis Verses, and Bibliography are included.  Visit the author's website http://www.donnajonapoli.com/ya.html#STORM to read an excerpt.

(I'm not a Russell Crowe fan, but now I think that I might want to watch the movie, Noah, just to see another perspective.)

(My copy of the book was provided by the publisher, and was an Advance Reader Copy)

I Survived: The Japanese Tsunami, 2011 - a review

At last year's KidLitCon, attendees were reminded to blog for a particular purpose and audience. I selfishly blog primarily for myself - to help me remember and gather my thoughts about the many children's books that I read in pursuit of my favorite job - connecting children with the "perfect" book, or in librarian terms, reader's advisory.  If along the way if I can save you some time or help you in a similar pursuit, so much the better.  This is why I don't always read the most talked about books, the most award-winning books, or the books with the greatest literary merit. I want to read what children like, and  a boy in my book club told me emphatically what he likes, I Survived books! "I've read them all," he told me.

I must confess that despite their popularity, I hadn't read any! Fortuitously, however, Scholastic sent me a galley copy of their upcoming, I Survived; The Japanese Tsunami, 2011 by Lauren Tarshis.

This is the 8th book in the series.  Written for grades 2-5, these are small, short chapter books; each chapter is only a few pages. The Japanese Tsunami, 2011, contains 13 chapters and is 83 pages, not including the back matter - facts, author's note, and resource materials.

I assume that most of the books are similar - a child survives one of history's worst natural or man made disasters.  In The Japanese Tsunami, it is Ben, an American born child visiting his Japanese grandfather, along with his mother and brother.  His father, an Air Force pilot, recently died in Iraq.

Miraculously, although Ben is swept away from the rest of the family in the tsunami, they all survive and are eventually reunited.  It's not a likely story, but here's what there is to like about it:

• Though it was written very soon (too soon?) after the disaster, it should be remembered that kids don't often pay attention to the news, and to them, March 11, 2011, may seem like a lifetime ago.  It's helpful to remind them of world-changing events.

• Books like the ones in the I Survived series help bring history alive for young people.  It's easier to relate to history if it is seen through the eyes of someone in a similar situation to one's own.

• The I Survived books are short and popular - great choices for reluctant readers.

And finally,

• Author Lauren Tarshis understands the freshness, the immensity, and the gravity of this particular disaster, and treats it with respect.  It was, after all, three separate and devastating disasters - an earthquake of epic proportions (lasting five minutes), a tsunami (hundreds of feet long and dozens of feet high), and a nuclear meltdown that sent more than 200,000 people fleeing from their homes.

In her author's notes, "A Triple Disaster," she notes that writing about the Japanese Tsunami was unlike writing the other I Survived books in which she could imagine herself in the shoes of her protagonists.  Regarding the Japanese Tsunami, 2011, she writes, the

...disaster was so enormous, I really can't being to imagine what it was like - the terror, the destruction, the exhaustion, the despair.

 What I do feel - deep in my heart - is admiration for the millions of people of the Tohoku region and throughout eastern Japan who are rebuilding their towns and their lives, who are determined to move forward ..

Due on shelves in September, 2013, this one's sure to be popular.

The art in my copy was not final, but the book will apparently have several black and white illustrations.

Kids can take an I Survived Survival Skills Quiz on the Scholastic website.

Horrors of History: City of the Dead - a review

Anderson, T. Neill. 2013. Horrors of History: City of the Dead. New York: Charlesbridge.

City of the Dead is gripping historical fiction that strays very little from historical accounts of the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. In ten chapters, T. Neill Anderson chronicles the unnamed hurricane from the dawn of its approach to the dawn of its passing. Employing fictional and actual persons of the time, the story unfolds from various points of view and parts of town - alternating between the orphans and sisters of the beachfront St. Mary's Orphanage, which had only three actual survivors, the inhabitants of the Lucas Terrace Apartments* located several blocks from the beach on the north side of town, Dr. Samuel Young in his sturdy home closer to the center of town, and Charlie, an African American laborer. Neill added Charlie's ordeal to the story to reflect the racial diversity that existed in Galveston at the time but is not reflected in the written annals of the storm.

The circumstances and dialogue are invented,

"It's a good thing we stooped by the grocery store last night," Alice muttered. There were almost twenty people in the parlor now -- they had all fled their houses when the flooding had become too great.The increasingly shrill cries of the cats reverberated through the living room,

But the photos, maps, and important details are real and accurate. A Prologue, Epilogue, and Author's Note put the story into context. Photo Credits are also included.


From the Epilogue:

Even to this day the Galveston hurricane of September 8, 1900, remains the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United States.  Approximately eight thousand men, women, and children lost their lives -- in other words, about one in six Galvestonians are believed to have died, either in the hurricane or in the flood that followed.

City of the Dead: Galveston Hurricane, 1900, is the first  in the new  Horrors of History series, created for readers from age 11 - 14. Gripping, compelling and tragic, City of the Dead debuts in August, 2013.

• * Title: Lucas Terrace under which 51 people lie buried, Galveston
• Summary: Remnants of multi-story building, bricks and lumber strewn in the wake of the 1900 hurricane and flood, Galveston, Texas.
• Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-123884 (b&w film copy neg. of right half stereo)
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

Note:

Adult readers interested in this topic may enjoy Isaac's Storm (Random House, 2000), a true account of the disaster, the politics of weather, and of U.S. Weather Meteorologist and hurricane survivor, Isaac Cline, stationed in Galveston at the time of the hurricane. Sadly, weather politics exists today as well as one can see from the competing information provided by European and American hurricane tracking models.  A USA Today article on the deficiencies of the US model in predicting Hurricane Sandy may be found here.

Also of interest is the National Hurricane Center's page on the history of tropical cyclone naming.  In 1900, at the time of the Galveston Hurricane, it was not customary to name hurricanes.  That practice was officially adopted in the United States in 1953.

Flood - a review

Villa, Alvaro F. 2013. Flood. North Mankato, MN: Capstone. 

(Advance Reader Copy provided by NetGalley)

If you read my blog regularly or read my monthly posts on the ALSC Blog, you'll know that my family was one of the tens of thousands affected by Hurricane Sandy.  It is for that reason, that I requested a copy of Flood for review.  I now have first-hand knowledge of the devastation caused by a hurricane, but more importantly in my area of the Jersey Shore, by flooding; I feel that I have a certain sad connection with the topic.  While I say that, I am also mindful of the fact that though thousands may be affected by the same natural disaster, no two personal disasters are the same.  There is a commonality, but yet, each town, each neighborhood, each family, each individual, must deal with a different set of difficulties.  Because of this, I approached Flood with trepidation and apprehension.  It was obviously not written in response to Superstorm Sandy, but nevertheless, it arrives at a time when people are particularly vulnerable.  To date, more than half a million disaster assistance claims have been filed with FEMA, with much of the damage caused by flooding.

Forgive me if I reveal the entire story, but this one I must follow through to the end.

Alvaro F. Villa's Flood appears to be the story of a flood more typical to the Midwest than along the nation's coastlines. In this wordless picture book, a family's modest home stands alone in the middle of a beautiful, grassy, rolling countryside, a river flowing behind. Two children and a dog play alongside a weathered picket fence.  Only the lone dark bird flying overhead hints at danger to come.  In the evening, the family spends a relaxing evening indoors.  Dawn brings the first hint of trouble as bad weather moves in.  The next days are spent in anxious discussion, preparation, and finally, evacuation. A violent and raging storm arrives, the river rises, wreaking destruction on the idyllic landscape.  In an eerie depiction of the storm's aftermath, the lone bird now sits upon the stump of a broken tree - looming large and black against the reddish hues of the dawning sky and the browns of the sandbags and silt left in the yard.  The family's muddied SUV returns.  From a distance the house can be seen, damaged but still standing.  The hopelessness of the family, the agonized tears of the young daughter are palpable as they survey the wreckage.  But of course, that is not the end.  It can never be.  No matter one's sense of hopelessness, helplessness - a start must be made. There is no other choice.  And so the rebuilding begins.  As the family paints and replants, the palette brightens and smiles return. The house, in its new coat of paint looks better than ever. It's not the same.  It will never be.  But the family is together and they have survived.

I passed this book along to my husband and children.  Of course, they are not librarians or book reviewers or educators. I asked them only because the experience is fresh in their minds.  My daughter had a keen observation.  There is a scene in which the family is spending the night in another location, having evacuated their home; the children are shown sleeping on the floor (as so many children, including mine, have recently done for days, weeks and months on end) while the parents and dog huddle in bed watching the television, presumably for news about the flood.  In a powerful use of symbolism, Villa shows their calm refuge surrounded by dark and raging flood waters - a powerful reminder of what is occurring elsewhere; but as my daughter pointed out, also easily misinterpreted by young readers who may be frightened by the water that appears to be menacingly approaching their makeshift beds.  Although beautiful and moving, and ultimately uplifting, this is not a picture book for preschoolers.  Appropriately, the publisher suggests Flood for Grades 1-3.

Is Flood  hopeful? Cautionary? Bibliotherapeutic? Empathetic? Preparatory?  I suspect Alviro F. Villa intended to offer hope.  I also suspect that much depends upon who reads it and when. 

Due on shelves February 1, 2013.