I’m just trying to catch my blog up since I’m a good month behind on posts. I’ll keep things short since most of what I’m going to post is on You Tube and in pics which is pretty much self-explanatory.

Most people didn’t know that this fire was relatively close to my place. It was directly north and my area was under evacuation. I was heading home after work when I saw smoke coming from the area in which I lived which is north of Helena.

As I got closer I started get that “sick to my stomach” feeling when I noticed that it was just north of my house. Law enforcement wasn’t going to let me back to my house even after I said I had dogs that I needed to get (I had a back-up plan in place - that’s why it’s good to have a truck and 4WD) I actually knew one of the MHP troopers working the roadblock and he told me to hurry up and get my dogs.

I did go home and get them, I also ran around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to grab some important stuff and throw it in the back of my truck. The problem with a forest fire is the smoke is every where and you just can’t see exactly where it is. You don’t know which direction it’s moving, you see helicopters and a slurry bomber working feverishly and every fire truck from miles around headed your direction, it’s a scary feeling!

I can tell you that after my adrenaline rush wore off, I was ready to throw up for about 3 hours afterwards. I did not feel well and the smoke doesn’t help that any. It took about 4 days for all the smoke to lift from the area and for me to feel comfortable that the fire wasn’t going to explode again.

Without going into more details, here’s the You Tube video I posted back then. I took alot of footage but put a few clips together so you can get an idea of what went on. You couldn’t see any flames because the smoke was blocking them.