High Winds in Montana

In 2012, I was part of a thrown together T2 crew made up people from multiple departments. My most exciting fire I’ve been on was with this crew somewhere in Montana. This was also the first big fire I was on that reached homes. It was early August, the area was pretty dry, and we had already seen some interesting fire behavior that season nearby.

While we were having our briefing one morning, we were already noticing that the conditions were good for fire.  Even though we couldn’t even see the sun yet, the fire was already sending ash to be dropping around our briefing a  good couple miles away. With homes scattered throughout the area several miles away, we spent the morning assessing the homes and to remove fuels that would endanger the homes.

With the topography being pretty flat and the fuels very dry, we were already very cautious when stating our first burning operation. We posted a few lookouts and left two guys with the rigs in case we had to evacuate in a hurry. Sure enough, it didn’t take very long before we started hear about new spot fires on the radio, including one spot directly under one of our trucks. We then pulled out and moved back closer to the homes to attempt another burnout. By this time, the winds had increased a bit and were moving steadily directly towards the homes. Because of the winds, we got smoked out before the front reached us. Being so smoky that I could barely seen the two other burners only about twenty meters on either side of me, we realized this plan wasn’t going to work either.

I believe the next spot we went to was one of the ranch homes which very near a highway lying parallel to the front. We quickly went to work removing fuels and moving them away. Thankfully they had a large green lawn, because that soon became our safety zone. Before the front even got close to us, we already had spot fires burning up the opposite side of the highway. It was pretty humbling to see how fast fire was capable of traveling when the conditions where just right.