This year's fire season began early for our state, before the middle of July. My spotter and I were asked to fly every day from the second week in July into (so far) the second week of September. Exhaustion set in long ago. On July 12, an enormous thunderstorm passed through Idaho and western Montana, igniting over 300 fires with strike after eye-blinding strike of lightning. The day after the storm, we flew for 6 hours, combing our territory for "smokes." There was no shortage of sightings. By the time the day ended, the dispatchers were so tired, they were laughing with each new location we called in on the radio. They couldn't assign fire numbers fast enough, and suppression equipment had long since been depleted. Every smokejumper had been deployed from the base, every helicopter commandeered, and every fire engine for hundreds of miles had been rushed into service. Retardant bombers were lumbering off runways at bases throughout the area, dropping their fire-quenching loads and returning for more.
Laughter stopped the next day. With superhuman effort, hotshot and fire aviation crews held most of the fires to less than a few acres, but the blazes that got a good start that day really took off and ran. Over 500,000 acres are now on fire in western Montana, and though the pace has slowed a little in the past week after one small cooling rain, there is still no wrap-up in sight. Ground-dwelling residents hack and cough their way through air quality that rates from marginal to a serious health risk. Outdoor activities have ceased. The woods are closed to loggers, fishermen, hunters, hikers, campers, even river rafters. So far this summer, on four consecutive days spotter flights had to be canceled, and we waited anxiously on the ground for the smoke to thin, knowing there were more fires hiding from the eyes of mountain-based lookouts. We hung on every word the weather man uttered, hoping for some relief from the hot, dry days plagued by inversions.
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