montana on fire

40 'large' fires burning. a 'large' fire is over 100 acres of timber, 300 of grass.

over 40 lightning starts since yesterday.

sperry chalet in glacier nat park evidently burnt down.

one by broadus ran 47 sections in 24

we've rolled 3 times in last two days.

last one was stubble and old grass, farmstead, trees, coulee--large flames, winds shifting, multiple fingers, beaucoup smoke.

on east side ranches and developments being evacuated ==alice creek fire
west side---hell the town of seeley lake is being evacuated===you'd think they could keep the damn thing outa town. lake itself has been offlimits quite a while===planes and helicopters loading outa it.

I love Montana=='big sky country' you can literally see 100 miles some days. or less than one or two, many days lately.

from the daily trout wrapper:
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2017/08/31/lightning-sparks-62-new-fires-national-guard-mobilizing/621107001/

I had to chuckle at your description of the Great Falls Tribune;"from the daily trout wrapper". :lol: I do need to say that GF Tribune is the only daily newspaper in Montana not owned by Lee Newspapers, a liberal outfit headquartered in Iowa.

Now on to more important matters. Wow! :shock: They expect a million acres to have burned by this weekend. :cry2: This is tragic--and could have been prevented had the loggers been able to log......such a mess our policies have caused. No common sense; people making rules that have never set foot in a Montana forest or a forest of the west. Sickening. And so wasteful.

We went to Alaska in 2001 and came back through Vancouver BC. It was so interesting to see logging only in Canada. Logs were in the water waiting to be loaded up and taken to a mill. Seemed strange when it should have been things as usual in America.

Do ya feel kinda left out? Hard to find many stories in the media about ANY of the fires. Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and now Montana and parts of Washington and Canada and not much more than a blip on the radar.
The one good thing we found out early on is that Montana has their shyt together so everyone knew what to do so the relief effort has been very methodical.

True, but the firefighters are getting exhausted.

I was in Merritt, B.C. about 10 yrs ago.

Cousin ran Hereford cows, had sold them all, bought logging iron.

Bug kill was horrible--he said 'it's a gold rush--get the gold while it's worth something"

(bugs are hardest on white wood, sawmills want it within a couple of yrs)

About the only 'logging thing' he didn't have was a chain saw.

Feller buncher, skidder, loader---3 guys sending 25-30 loads a day to town.

Loader at mill that unload truck in one bite.

Logs decked as high as you could stack for half a mile.

Tandem truck with big box and extensions couldn't gain on pile coming off the debarker. Truck kept hauling all nite.

Contrast that to Colorado---we were down there staking claims around same time. Whole front page spread on bug kill. "Too bad there isn't a place to put it to use"--still hard to believe, but article said there was not one single sawmill still running in the state.

A problem we have is that fire's on the forest can burn for months. And when they come out on private land--then we get to deal with it.

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2017/09/04/when-alice-creek-fire-hit-volunteers-hit-back/630981001/

Faster horses said:

I had to chuckle at your description of the Great Falls Tribune;"from the daily trout wrapper". :lol: I do need to say that GF Tribune is the only daily newspaper in Montana not owned by Lee Newspapers, a liberal outfit headquartered in Iowa.

Now on to more important matters. Wow! :shock: They expect a million acres to have burned by this weekend. :cry2: This is tragic--and could have been prevented had the loggers been able to log......such a mess our policies have caused. No common sense; people making rules that have never set foot in a Montana forest or a forest of the west. Sickening. And so wasteful.

We went to Alaska in 2001 and came back through Vancouver BC. It was so interesting to see logging only in Canada. Logs were in the water waiting to be loaded up and taken to a mill. Seemed strange when it should have been things as usual in America.

Click to expand...

US Forest Service needs to realize their job is not public relations, but forest management.

we're over million acres burnt, large fires look like they will combine, more starts, over 300 million $ spent, many fires -0- % contained and it's smokier than hell--everywhere

littlejoe said:

we're over million acres burnt, large fires look like they will combine, more starts, over 300 million $ spent, many fires -0- % contained and it's smokier than hell--everywhere

Click to expand...

Today was the most clear day we've had here in NE Wyoming.
So sad, all those resources being burned up. :cry2:

We cleaned up a campsite in the Big Horn Mountains a day or so ago. One of the permit riders up there told a forest ranger what a mess was left there, and the ranger's comment was, "oh well. I figure the next campers that come along will clean it up."
What an attitude. It's the attitude of many federal workers that are so upsetting. Then to know the feds are part of the cause of
the fires not being squelched long before they are of great magnitude, makes it hard to take.