POTOMAC - As summer’s dry heat wanes into cooler damp weather, fire season comes to an end. Some Potomac residents took time this year to openly reflect on past fire seasons and their firefighting experiences. They shared stories of fighting fires on their own; when they would leave the mill, their logging jobs and ranches to fight fires. They used their own equipment and worked through the night to put the fires out.
Potomac has a history of the Anaconda and Champion logging companies, the Blackfoot Forest Protective Association (BFPA), foresters and ranchers working together to put out forest fires. More than 50 years ago, the Gold Creek Ranger station, around the seven mile bridge up Gold Creek, kept stock and the rangers worked in the woods until hunting season.
From the 1920s to 1971, the BFPA was in charge of forest fire management. It was created by the Anaconda Logging Company and was based at the lumber mill in Bonner with the intent to put fires out before it destroyed valuable timberland in the Blackfoot. There was a regular small crew at the mill for the Anaconda Company, as well as outlying people who would be called in to help fight fires.
Ralph Hanson was a forester for the Anaconda Company and the BFPA fire warden from 1954 to 1971. He dispatched resources and provided information about the area specific to each fire. He also supplied certain kits to each crew depending on the area they were going to.
Bonner resident and Potomac landowner Andy Lukes worked for the BFPA as a firefighter and was the Community Forest Manager forester in the 1970s.
“The BFPA was a “can do, get it done” type of organization when it came to fires,” said Lukes.
Lukes remembers a time when Hanson dispatched him to a fire near Bonner. Along with other firefighting essentials, Hanson gave Lukes a snake bite kit. Lukes wondered why this particular fire gear had a snake bite kit in it. Hanson told him that area can have rattlesnakes.
Lukes and three other firefighters walked up the gulch to the fire.
“It was a hot and hard climb,” he said. “I was above the fire working on the line. It was a small fire, not quite an acre and it was creeping around, not running.”
Then, not 10 feet from him, a three-foot-long rattlesnake came slithering down the hill. He killed it with his shovel and cut off the rattles. Later, Lukes left the rattles and a note of thanks for the snake bite kit on Hanson’s desk.
“That was a good example of how well he [Hanson] knew the area he was in charge of,” said Lukes.
* * * * *
In the early fall of 1972, Lukes worked on fire near Drummond with a prison crew. Some of the crew was on the top of the fire, fighting from above on a plateau. The rest of the team was fighting from the side to keep the fire from running.
Lukes said the crew was brought to the Deer Lodge Prison for three hours sleep. When they returned, their water pumps had frozen.
“With late season fires, they are mostly wind driven with extremely cold nights,” said Lukes.
* * * * *
Longtime Potomac resident Edward Olean has fought fires and worked in the woods for more than 60 years. Like other loggers, Olean also worked at the mill in Bonner.
Olean remembers his boss Harold Smith telling him about fire starts. Then Olean would load the Cat on the lowboy for sometimes three weeks in a row.
“A lot of nights we didn’t come home because we were working the firelines. Our families didn’t know where we were. There wasn’t communication [cell phones] like there is now,” said Olean.
Olean’s wife Judy said if he didn’t show up at the door she knew he was probably on a fire.
She remembers when a fire started across from Twin Creeks where they were living at the time.
“There was a lightning strike across the highway. The guys headed to get their equipment and got up there. There wasn’t a lot of traffic, so us ladies sat in our lawn chairs in the road [Highway 200] and watched our guys [work] and the fire burn across the river.”
Whenever there was a fire call, if Olean was in the woods he would load the Cats at the logging jobs and lowboy them to the fire. He said if they would get on the fires right away they would be controlled.
Olean remembers a time when fires were put out almost overnight. At night the fire lays down due to the high humidity, low wind and cooler temperatures. Olean remembered a couple fires that stayed wild (active) all night but were eventually controlled.
“If you get on it right away you can get it out pretty good but at noon or 1 p.m., you are not doing so much then because the fire has a mind of its own,” said Olean. “It gets hot and the fire makes its own wind.”
* * * * *
The Gold Creek Ranger Station was above the seven-mile bridge up Gold Creek off Highway 200. On 48 acres the U.S. Forest Service ran more than 40 head of mules and had a tack room, barn, corrals, hitching rails and a generator for the phone lines than ran over Mineral Mountain, Gold Peak and the Belmont and to the Rattlesnake.
“It was a pretty big operation; the pack animals brought food and water to the fire lookouts,” Olean said. There used to be active fire lookouts on Mineral Mountain as well as Boulder Point.
In 1959, there was a 300-acre fire near Elk Creek. The water was packed to it by pack horse, said Olean.
Other times Olean said they used pumps in the creeks for water to put the fires out. The pumps could send water maybe 100 feet uphill.
* * * * *
While Olean worked on the crews, he also drove a Cat to build fireline, in some places that were very steep and rocky.
“The Cats could go anywhere,” he said.
When Olean was on a Cat he had a crew assigned to follow him. “And that is what the crew behind you did, they watched me backing up and they watched the line.”
“At nighttime we could see the fire. [After the canyon winds died down and the night breeze quit] the fire was slow,” said Olean. “We would maybe let 100 foot spots burn [themselves out].”
In the summer of 1967 the Lolo National Forest land was closed due to fire danger. Olean had to sit on the Woodworth Road blocking access until the end of August when a storm came through and water was running everywhere. “Then we went back to logging and that was the end of that standoff,” said Olean.
* * * * *
Olean, Lukes and another longtime Potomac resident Jim Cheff said when they were fighting fires years ago, they fought them more aggressively [than now] and right away before the fires got big.
“We were never around big fires until nowadays. We got them out right away and still watched out for each other,” said Olean.
Cheff remembers more than 6o years ago, he and his dad were called and taken by the BFPA to work on a fire in the hills around Potomac. He and his dad took turns sleeping on the fireline and working to build lines. Cheff said his dad woke him up around 4 a.m. for chores. He went down to their family ranch to milk the cows and then went back and worked the fire. They were paid $30.
Nowadays firefighting seems to be institutionalized Lukes said, pointing to this year’s Beescove fire above Potomac as an example. He said his property was threatened during the Beescove fire that started July 23 by lightning.
“They spent $6.5 million [at his last count] on a fire that had difficult terrain but was mostly fought by aerial attack. This is reflective on how fires are being fought now,” said Lukes. “That fire would have been fought differently 40 or 50 years ago. The good old way of getting it done [putting out a fire] has eroded.”
Reader Comments(0)