Wild Fire!!

This was taken from my daughter’s deck this morning. A growing fire north of Helena, MT. It is threatening some residential areas and is zero percent contained.

This is called the North Hills Fire.

That it is. Grew in size by over 60% from Saturday to Sunday.

Dang! Does it appear that your daughters home is in any danger right now? Wishing the best outcome from Mississippi.

Don't know which way your daughters deck faces, but looks like the wind is blowing from left to right and not towards your daughters house. And that's the good news.

Anyone who has lived in an area than is impacted by a wildfire knows how quickly these things take off and change direction. I sure your daughter has an evac plan already in place and is monitoring the situation very closely. Wishing her and everyone else up there the very best.

We had a similar situation here last summer at this time. Our home is the white roof at the lower left:



The fire burned onto our property, pretty much to our back door. We were prepared months before by clearing brush, thinning and limbing trees and cleaning gutters. I also installed stand pipes in several places around my yard that connect fire hoses to my irrigation system. We didn't lose so much as a piece of firewood.

6322 said:

We had a similar situation here last summer at this time. Our home is the white roof at the lower left:

View attachment 75013

The fire burned onto our property, pretty much to our back door. We were prepared months before by clearing brush, thinning and limbing trees and cleaning gutters. I also installed stand pipes in several places around my yard that connect fire hoses to my irrigation system. We didn't lose so much as a piece of firewood.

View attachment 75014

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It helps to know what you are doing. Many folks do not create defensible space. Sometimes, like in Paradise, CA it barely matters.

It does look like a meadow between the camera and the flames in Kevin's photo could help a lot.

As much as we do, I still chalk it up to divine intervention, as some places with all of the right things done still burn to the ground. Just another summer in the west, living in a fire adapted ecosystem.

The fire is moving north and east towards the Missouri River, my daughter’s home is 4 miles west of the fire and we are another 3 miles west of her. My son-in-law is a Lieutenant in a local city fire department and a former wild lands fire fighter. He has spent years thinning their heavily wooded land. Our place is mostly grassland with some wetlands; much less threat to us. It does not appear they are in any immediate danger, nor are we worried about this fire. The problem is the next fire, which shall surely come.

Much of the west is a tinder box waiting to ignite. Every effort by a state or federal agency to take steps to manage government forests and mitigate the fire hazard is met with lawsuits filed by various, evidently well funded, groups. They seem to successfully judge shop and draw the suits out for years. Last count there were 26 active suits against forest management projects in Montana alone.

akbeemer said:

They seem to successfully judge shop and draw the suits out for years. Last count there were 26 active suits against forest management projects in Montana alone.

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With due respect or not, to the esteemed lawyers on this forum, I have maintained for 20 years that we should re-administer the bar exam, grade on the curve, and only pass the top 50%. Since all on this forum would pass this should help, not harm their practices. I am only half kidding.

It's interesting that the origins of justice had to do with right and wrong...

45% contained now.

Several more fires are going. This one is called the Nevada Mountain fire and is about 20-25 miles NW of us. Picture taken from our place. So far no smoke in our area, thankfully.

We're getting nowhere near the smoke that we usually get, summers; quite pleasant really. The extensive rains over the last several months must have kept things nicely dampened. Even here in Calgary, where the climate is quite dry, I haven't run my lawn sprinkler system at all this summer.

Hey Kevin,
Not sure if you've seen this or not. As a professional, drives me nuts seeing stupid people doing stupid things.
https://helenair.com/news/state-and...e_0a3122fa-0b6f-5254-8287-2e97887d3ec9.html#1

We have had some grass fires nearby the last few years, never a good sight. A fire fighter in a command truck rolled up to shop one day a few years back and said our road was the perimeter being set up for the fire coming off the highway That ended well for all nearby homes.

Monday, while in shop, a strong smoke odor took over shop as I had both roll ups open .
I walked to edge of canyon and looking south toward town were huge clouds on the ridge line. It filled the canyon quickly and I texted H to see if the local womens FB group knew what was going on. ( if it's happening, these ladies know all about it)
She sent back a page from one of the ranches the day before announcing a prescribed burn and they had things in control...before the burn! The wind has been picking up around noon the last few days and at 15mph with higher gusts, I was a bit worried as we were straight downwind.
After about an hour of continual heavier smoke, it let up luckily. Assuming the controlled chaos became a bit more controlled. We are under a burn ban and regardless of having a scheduled burn, seems the wind factor was left out of some common sense action plans as there is no way that was anything close to controlled!

The smell of burnt grass is heavy the last two mornings and the shop has a smokey aroma still.

A welder lit up another one working on a fence and some roadside ignition(cigarettes suspected) fired off two more that took off. Ready for some Fall rain!

Agreed, we could use rain anytime here also. We have been fortunate this summer. Not many fires nearby and clean air for the most part. The thing that gets me about any fire is that we have to put folks in harms way to catch them and put them out. Some stuff happens like lightning or accidents but when it's just foolishness, I just don't have much patience. We've lost too many firefighters in the line of duty.