(please note i understand none of you have no clue on the ppl and places listed butjust cut and pasted it from another forum that has a member that grew up here so i threw the exact ppl and places in for his benifit)
was leaving for lunch when the fire whistle blew.....scanner said there was afire south the river in the next county and they needed help.......given the wind was blowing at 30-35ish, gusting over 50 i would say so.....the wife and i grabbed a camera and headed out....it was burning straight south of town but due to where the bridge is it was a 12 mile drive to the fire.........crossed the river and headed down Hwy 528......got 2 and a half miles down to Harold Nichols house saw the fire burning about 1/2 mile ahead but the smoke was thick and the plume was "crossing" the road 100 feet ahead of us........sat and watched it awhile got some pics, asked the cop weither it was safe to go anyfarther.....he checked the radio and said hold tight it will be here in a couple minutes, no need to move......
we swapped sides of the road and kept an eye on it....bout the time we saw flames 50 yards ahead of us a freelance "photographer"(and i use the term loosely) bulled up beside us, gets out and starts walking twords the fire line......picture this.....50 yards to the flames......wind gusting at 50.....idiot walking twords the flames........though the state road guy was going to run his *** over.....the wife and i see the fire jump the highway from north to south and decide to beat *** to the nearest road going north to get away from the smoke and the flames.......take the back roads get on the north side of the fire since the wind was blowing more ore less west but also slightly south.....called our daughter who was at home listening to the scanner if there was anything we needed to know, she said are you at the Chelsea Church fire....WTF?.....no we are at the Peterson fire....oh....theres a fire at Chelsea Church....WTF? the wife and i get out of the truck and look to the northeast....sure enough there is a HUGE plume of smoke 14 miles as the crow flies to the north east...ok theres two major fires....we tell her to call us if she heres anything we need to know about the Peterson fire or if a 3rd one starts.....so we find a spot with a rather large summer followed field to the west of us, the other side of which is on fire, and we settle down and grab the telephoto lens for the camera and grab some pics of the fire out on the other side of the field........
a gal drives up behind us, startling us as we were in the middle of a field, and asked who we were, but said oh the paper before we could answer seeing the cameras, she said the guys in the house to the south of us are out of town and she is going to get the dogs out for them(turns out it was Kelly Ryan's place just east of Steve Peters).....we say good luck and sat back and watched figuring we would keep an eye on the fire and have time to warn her if it got to close.......i thought at that point she could drive up to the house but when she parked 100 yards from the house i figured she might need help and hauled *** down the field parked beside her, crawled through a couple of 3 wire fences and scrambled over the corral.....
got to the kennals and there were 3 hunting dogs(unsure what breed, hunting breeds arent my thing but looked like shorter heavier versions of the german wire hares my uncle runs) glad i decided to help cause i could feel the heat from the fire and two of the dogs had no collars and his female was in heat.......grabbed couple of lead ropes wrapped around a corral rail and improvised a couple collars and leashes......was interesting getting them to the trucks as the males were more interested in the female than getting to safety.......got to the trucks, through the males in the back of our truck and the female in the back of the gals and headed out for the river road to get away from the smoke.......unsure of what we are going to do with the dogs....the gal gets ahold of Kelly and we run the dogs a mile down the road to Dornecks.......we get the dogs kenneled there and the gal says thanks i couldnt have done it without yah, said no problem with the way the fire was coming and the fact it was a ways between the truc and the house figured it was better safe than sorry and she headed to town and we headed back out to where we were for pics.......
got back to where we were back behind Nichols.....see his gigantic woodpile thats right behind his house that must be 20 years old go up in flames.....figured the house went too.......noticed the battery in the digital was going out and we didnt have a spare.....called a buddy and asked him to stop by the shop and get it and bring it out to Harry's Bar back out at the Highway by the bridge........we head out, the whole way out the fire wasnt within a mile of the bottom river road.....
get to Harry's and wait for my buddy.....in the 10 minutes we sat there they closed the bottom road WTF? battery gets to us, we head back over to the bottom road the state highway guy says we cant go down as its close to the road....wife trys to talk her way through but didnt work....bout this time the head state highway guy, Juve, pulled up, the wife and i know him well, asks if she can jump in and he says sure.......i stayed put and she took off with Juve to get more pics.......half hour later i see flames creeping the over the hill top and the state guy says they are pulling everyone at Harry's out and across the bridge....i said no chit, get Juve on the radio and tell my wife ill be across the river......
sit down at the river watching the smoke for an hour or so......the wife called me on the truck phone and said to come pick her up at Harry's as they have it more or less under control.......we head to town......wife tells me on the way that they didnt loose a single lived in house but lost lots of out buildings and a trailer that was vacant by Go-Getters.....i went to a meeting and the wife stayed at work to get stuff done she didnt do cause she was out getting pics...........
after the meeting we head back out.....most everything is under control at this point.....some hotspots and hay stacks and the like still burning.......Rauch's lost everything but the house and some equipment......the big slue burned up, which is prolly a good thing, guessing there was 20 plus years of cattails and rushes built up, doubt its burned in my life time.....Wilkinsons land burned pretty good....thats where it first jumped the road... Mormon's junk yard burned up as did everything around but the trailers....burned right up to the propane tanks on both sides......when we took the drive they were cleaning up the hot spot in the trees below and to the west of Longs........jumped Hwy 13 south of Harry's but they caught it there using tractors pulling disks and graders.......water was useless other than protecting buildings due to the wind.....plowing up land was the only thing that slowed it down and stopped it.........unsure how many hundreds of acres it burned.......started over on Peterson's west of Jensen's log cabin that Krauths have......burned most of both sides of 528 from Wilkinson's east to past 13 and a half mile farther east.......north to south there are patches a couple miles wide.....burned quite aways south and east of Long's.....stopped at Go-Getters on the way back in as thats where they were filling fire trucks, asked the Wolf Point guys that were there if they wanted us to run to town to get them some gatoraide or food or something but they said they were good, had enough food around to feed them for a week...... Kendal Johnson, if he can get in the air tomorrow, is going to try and get us some aerial photos.........
long damn day......didnt get to eat till dang near 8p.m. as i had no snacks in the truck myself
well our buddy went up in his plane, got pics and was nice enough to plot the basic outline with his GPS and thanks to GoogleEarth ive got a map for yah :grin:.....the gps said the area was roughly 3,900 acres the guy did his best to follow the exact outline but he could only turn so sharp plus there are a few areas inside that didnt burn like plowed fields and such....the one thing i forgot to label is the river bottom road but the line the arrow is pointing to next to the river is that road....the road going north and south of the river bottom road to 528 west of the "M" on Missouri River" is the road by Go-Getters, Go-Getters being at the junction of it and 528, just above teh "H" on Highway 528...highways 13 and 528 are the only paved roads
various aerial pics our buddy got us this morning
was leaving for lunch when the fire whistle blew.....scanner said there was afire south the river in the next county and they needed help.......given the wind was blowing at 30-35ish, gusting over 50 i would say so.....the wife and i grabbed a camera and headed out....it was burning straight south of town but due to where the bridge is it was a 12 mile drive to the fire.........crossed the river and headed down Hwy 528......got 2 and a half miles down to Harold Nichols house saw the fire burning about 1/2 mile ahead but the smoke was thick and the plume was "crossing" the road 100 feet ahead of us........sat and watched it awhile got some pics, asked the cop weither it was safe to go anyfarther.....he checked the radio and said hold tight it will be here in a couple minutes, no need to move......
we swapped sides of the road and kept an eye on it....bout the time we saw flames 50 yards ahead of us a freelance "photographer"(and i use the term loosely) bulled up beside us, gets out and starts walking twords the fire line......picture this.....50 yards to the flames......wind gusting at 50.....idiot walking twords the flames........though the state road guy was going to run his *** over.....the wife and i see the fire jump the highway from north to south and decide to beat *** to the nearest road going north to get away from the smoke and the flames.......take the back roads get on the north side of the fire since the wind was blowing more ore less west but also slightly south.....called our daughter who was at home listening to the scanner if there was anything we needed to know, she said are you at the Chelsea Church fire....WTF?.....no we are at the Peterson fire....oh....theres a fire at Chelsea Church....WTF? the wife and i get out of the truck and look to the northeast....sure enough there is a HUGE plume of smoke 14 miles as the crow flies to the north east...ok theres two major fires....we tell her to call us if she heres anything we need to know about the Peterson fire or if a 3rd one starts.....so we find a spot with a rather large summer followed field to the west of us, the other side of which is on fire, and we settle down and grab the telephoto lens for the camera and grab some pics of the fire out on the other side of the field........
a gal drives up behind us, startling us as we were in the middle of a field, and asked who we were, but said oh the paper before we could answer seeing the cameras, she said the guys in the house to the south of us are out of town and she is going to get the dogs out for them(turns out it was Kelly Ryan's place just east of Steve Peters).....we say good luck and sat back and watched figuring we would keep an eye on the fire and have time to warn her if it got to close.......i thought at that point she could drive up to the house but when she parked 100 yards from the house i figured she might need help and hauled *** down the field parked beside her, crawled through a couple of 3 wire fences and scrambled over the corral.....
got to the kennals and there were 3 hunting dogs(unsure what breed, hunting breeds arent my thing but looked like shorter heavier versions of the german wire hares my uncle runs) glad i decided to help cause i could feel the heat from the fire and two of the dogs had no collars and his female was in heat.......grabbed couple of lead ropes wrapped around a corral rail and improvised a couple collars and leashes......was interesting getting them to the trucks as the males were more interested in the female than getting to safety.......got to the trucks, through the males in the back of our truck and the female in the back of the gals and headed out for the river road to get away from the smoke.......unsure of what we are going to do with the dogs....the gal gets ahold of Kelly and we run the dogs a mile down the road to Dornecks.......we get the dogs kenneled there and the gal says thanks i couldnt have done it without yah, said no problem with the way the fire was coming and the fact it was a ways between the truc and the house figured it was better safe than sorry and she headed to town and we headed back out to where we were for pics.......
got back to where we were back behind Nichols.....see his gigantic woodpile thats right behind his house that must be 20 years old go up in flames.....figured the house went too.......noticed the battery in the digital was going out and we didnt have a spare.....called a buddy and asked him to stop by the shop and get it and bring it out to Harry's Bar back out at the Highway by the bridge........we head out, the whole way out the fire wasnt within a mile of the bottom river road.....
get to Harry's and wait for my buddy.....in the 10 minutes we sat there they closed the bottom road WTF? battery gets to us, we head back over to the bottom road the state highway guy says we cant go down as its close to the road....wife trys to talk her way through but didnt work....bout this time the head state highway guy, Juve, pulled up, the wife and i know him well, asks if she can jump in and he says sure.......i stayed put and she took off with Juve to get more pics.......half hour later i see flames creeping the over the hill top and the state guy says they are pulling everyone at Harry's out and across the bridge....i said no chit, get Juve on the radio and tell my wife ill be across the river......
sit down at the river watching the smoke for an hour or so......the wife called me on the truck phone and said to come pick her up at Harry's as they have it more or less under control.......we head to town......wife tells me on the way that they didnt loose a single lived in house but lost lots of out buildings and a trailer that was vacant by Go-Getters.....i went to a meeting and the wife stayed at work to get stuff done she didnt do cause she was out getting pics...........
after the meeting we head back out.....most everything is under control at this point.....some hotspots and hay stacks and the like still burning.......Rauch's lost everything but the house and some equipment......the big slue burned up, which is prolly a good thing, guessing there was 20 plus years of cattails and rushes built up, doubt its burned in my life time.....Wilkinsons land burned pretty good....thats where it first jumped the road... Mormon's junk yard burned up as did everything around but the trailers....burned right up to the propane tanks on both sides......when we took the drive they were cleaning up the hot spot in the trees below and to the west of Longs........jumped Hwy 13 south of Harry's but they caught it there using tractors pulling disks and graders.......water was useless other than protecting buildings due to the wind.....plowing up land was the only thing that slowed it down and stopped it.........unsure how many hundreds of acres it burned.......started over on Peterson's west of Jensen's log cabin that Krauths have......burned most of both sides of 528 from Wilkinson's east to past 13 and a half mile farther east.......north to south there are patches a couple miles wide.....burned quite aways south and east of Long's.....stopped at Go-Getters on the way back in as thats where they were filling fire trucks, asked the Wolf Point guys that were there if they wanted us to run to town to get them some gatoraide or food or something but they said they were good, had enough food around to feed them for a week...... Kendal Johnson, if he can get in the air tomorrow, is going to try and get us some aerial photos.........
long damn day......didnt get to eat till dang near 8p.m. as i had no snacks in the truck myself
well our buddy went up in his plane, got pics and was nice enough to plot the basic outline with his GPS and thanks to GoogleEarth ive got a map for yah :grin:.....the gps said the area was roughly 3,900 acres the guy did his best to follow the exact outline but he could only turn so sharp plus there are a few areas inside that didnt burn like plowed fields and such....the one thing i forgot to label is the river bottom road but the line the arrow is pointing to next to the river is that road....the road going north and south of the river bottom road to 528 west of the "M" on Missouri River" is the road by Go-Getters, Go-Getters being at the junction of it and 528, just above teh "H" on Highway 528...highways 13 and 528 are the only paved roads
various aerial pics our buddy got us this morning
