Yellowstone 88 – Song of Fire

In the summer of 1988 dry lightning sparked a fire in the parched and drought ridden landscape of Yellowstone, igniting a blaze that would scorch over 1,500,000 perimeter acres of the park. More than 20,000 firefighters and military personnel from around the US descended upon the park to try and make a stand against the inferno. For five months the fires, some natural and some caused by humans, raged unabated until winter snow and rain finally put an end to the conflagration. Relatively few animals died in the actual fires. Instinctively fauna understand and are able to gauge fire and can usually survive one. Some flee and some go underground, most note the wind and smoke patterns and move away from the fire as quickly and as far as they can. Multiple fires converging pose a greater threat but the real danger to animals and birds comes after a fire when the land is scorched bare and there is no food to be found. The same winter snow that doused the uncontained fires was so severe that animals simply starved or died attempting to find food. It was a bitter loss of great proportion. Multiple lessons in wild land fire management were learned from those harrowing months – lessons that continue to shape on-going policy, communication and command structures and changes in critical ecological doctrine.

ServicesMusic, Sound Design, Cinema MixComposerMark MurphyClientLittle Fluffy CloudsYear2023AnimationJerry Van DeBeekWriterBetsy De FriesVO Peter Coyote