With the cooler weather so far over the weekend they made some progress on the Derby Fire but it looks like that is in Jeporady now.<br />n<br />n<a href="http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/09/04/news/state/30-derby_g.txt" >Fire officials order more evacuations</a><br />n<br />n<blockquote>More than 200 homes were being evacuated Sunday night on the western flank of the fast-growing Derby Mountain fire.<br />n<br />nFire officials feared that winds and warmer temperatures in the coming days will create "extreme" fire conditions on the Derby fire, which had grown to 180,000 acres by Sunday night and was considered 20 percent contained.<br />n<br />nThe fire is burning fiercely, and sometimes erratically, including a burst of about 3 miles in an hour Sunday afternoon.</blockquote><br />n<br />nThe story talks about how temperatures are expected to climb for the next few days and the humidity is going to drop so expect problems. These fires really get going in those conditions. Factor in some wind, which this area is famous for, and it could get explosive.<br />n<br />nThere are a lot of people and animals in the area that I am thinking about. Factor in the Firefighters working hard to control this and there is a lot of things to pray for. Let's hope they make some progress and it doesn't make any more huge runs like last week.<br />n<br />nTo find out a little more information about this fire you can go here:<br />n<br />n<a href="http://www.inciweb.org/incident/440/" >Derby Mountain Wildland Fire</a><br />n<br />nThere is an RSS feed available on the page to keep up on the announcements and news. I note the maps available are a few days old and I don't know when new ones will be available but I assume there will be some updated ones eventually. They are working at putting out the fire and sometimes the information doesn't get distributed to the public as fast as we would like to see it. Let's not criticize them for not being fully up to date and try to understand the stress they are under fighting this.<br />n<br />n<strong>Compassion brings us to a stop, and for a moment we rise above ourselves. Mason Cooley</strong>