Decades of research burned in this Oregon forest. Now it could hold clues to wildfire mysteries

It was a single lightning strike, deep in the heart of the forest. When he saw the smoke, Robert Mutch knew it was trouble.

“I was just kind of watching it with dread,” said Mutch, a fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service who was overseeing remote and difficult terrain on the western slopes of the Cascade Mountains southeast of Corvallis. “I knew it was not going to stop.”