S5: E5: The Great Seney Fire: A History of the Walsh Ditch Fire of 1976 with Greg Lusk

The Crystal Falls Community District Library in partnership with the U.P. Publishers & Authors Association (UPPAA) presents author events with winners of the UP Notable Book List. 

For more information please visit the links below

www.UPPAA.org  

www.UPNotable.com 

www.amazon.com/Great-Seney-Fire-History-Walsh/dp/0578959089 

GREGORY M. LUSK, a native Yooper, who grew up in lower Michigan and southern California, has two grown sons and now lives in Hancock, Michigan, with his wife, Sandra. He spent the long, dry summer of 1976 helping to suppress the largest, most costly forest fire that had burned in Michigan since 1908. In early August, he left his regular duties as a fire management specialist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources in Marquette to work on the fire as the assistant Fire Boss for the State. His experiences several years earlier in Vietnam as a platoon leader were as valuable as his degree in forestry from Michigan Tech and his extensive training in forest fire behavior in the effort. The leaves had fallen, and the early winter snow was starting to fall by the time he got home. Long after he retired as the Upper Peninsula State fire supervisor in 1997, he dug out his news clippings, maps, and notes and began writing the history of the Great Seney fire. He was partly motivated by the aphorism that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it"; with hopes that this account will help others remember this essential piece of Michigan history.

"Greg Lusk is a native Yooper who had a front-row seat for the Seney Fire. Specifically, he left his job as a fire specialist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to become the Assistant Fire Boss for the State’s suppression of the Seney Fire. As such, Lusk would need to call on both his experience as a seasoned veteran of Vietnam as a platoon leader as well as his degree in forestry from Michigan Tech to succeed. An inveterate and meticulous record-keeper, he unearthed his many boxes of official and unofficial documentation after his retirement to write The Great Seney Fire.