Fire!

Jim Shadle and I were spending a relaxing afternoon in his boat catching kokanee (a

freshwater salmon) on Lake Koocanusa in western Montana. It is a hard job catching

fish, but someone has to do it.

As I relaxed, Jim was scanning the hillside. He spent many years fighting fires as a

forester, and habitually looks for smoke. And there it was, just up hill from where we

were fishing.

It wasn’t much of a fire. He guessed that lightening struck a snag, a dead

tree that is still standing. (A storm had forced us off the lake an hour before.)

Many lightening strikes set snags on fire. He guessed that in a while the smoke

would rise above the top of the hill, and the fire lookout station a few miles away

would spot it.

In about 10 minutes we heard an airplane. It was a spotter plane. The plane

circled the fire for a few minutes gathering data on its location and how to

fight it. A nearby road gave a good route for smoke chasers to access it.

Smoke chasers are fire fighters that put out small, localized fires.

The fire grew from the snag to the nearby brush.

The darker smoke indicated that the fire was hot.

In a few more minutes we saw a forest service truck on the opposite side of

the lake, and a person with binoculars was watching the fire. The spotting

plane returned. The fire continued to grow.

After a few more minutes we heard a helicopter thumping up the canyon.

Then, over the ridge like the cavalry coming to the rescue, it came.

The helicopter had a hose hanging from its bottom, which let it suck up

water from the lake.

Like a hummingbird stopping at a flower, the helicopter can swoop down to the edge

of the lake, stick the snorkel into the water and in 10 to 15 seconds, rise up into the air.

It flew up the hill to the fire and dropped the water onto the blaze.

Sometimes the drop would be onto a specific spot like the snag, and sometimes it

would sweep over the area to get it wet so the fire would not spread. Then it would swoop

back to the lake for another drink. Every 2.5 minutes it would make a round trip.

The helicopter cannot put the fire out when it is burning a snag. Smoke chasers must

come to put it out, but it was effective at stopping the fire’s advance.

In the evening we stopped by to look and in the low evening light we could see the

flame. There was very little smoke. It was too dark for us to see the smoke chasers,

but they were there. The next day we looked at the site from across the lake, The fire

was out and caused little damage. A rainbow came out above the fire location -- really –

but I didn’t have my camera.

It was a happy ending, so I’ll show a picture from the sunset that night taken a few miles

down river from the lake.