Rex Trulove
This is a picture taken from our back porch of the fire that has been referenced repeatedly in these images. The location of these flames is about 15 miles south of where the other images were taken, so this should give a good idea of how big this fire was. The air distance from where this was taken and the fire in the image is about three and a quarter miles.
Fires like this must be very scary for the people in your valley.
People here are used to them and most know what to do when a fire threatens, but yes, it is a major concern when a big fire threatens the valley. Many people were evacuated. It wasn’t just the people, either. Most of the people who evacuated also had horses, cattle, sheep, dogs, cats, and other animals. Many ranches in the area, those that weren’t threatened by fire, opened up their ranches to take care of the animals. It was a community effort and people from other counties even offered to help.
It’s great to see people helping each other like that.
We have a really good community when it comes to helping each other. That attitude hasn’t been removed like it has in so many of the more populous areas.
These fires are nothing to sneeze at when they are far away from your home.
This is the third big fire we’ve had in the last five years, though this was the biggest. A lot of people didn’t hear much about these huge fires because while they were burning, Houston was getting clobbered by a hurricane. Most of the emergency funding went to Houston and almost none to fighting fires in the west.
That explains what happened in Montana why help was not around at that time.
Yes, and most of the manpower that was available were busy fighting fires in other parts of the state. There was a huge fire in Glacier National Park, two more southeast of us, and a big one northwest of us, along with about 30 smaller fires that were “only” a few hundred to a few thousand acres. They were pulling in firefighters from all over the country. Funding was the biggest issue, though.