Yet Again

I'm tired, that's for sure. Last night the weather forecasters said there was going to be a frontal passage that would bring 40 MPH winds and with the hot temperatures and low humidity gave us a red flag warning in the area. Then to top it off they said there was a chance of dry lightning with the frontal passage. Guess what, they were right.<br />n<br />nAbout 8:00 last night I heard some rumbling of thunder and went outside and looked and sure enough off to the north was some lightning. Damn, that worried me. We jumped in the pickup and took off to start driving around to check for fire when the wind hit STRONG. I'll believe it was 40 MPH, it was really blowing. We got a couple of miles away from the p[lace and was cresting a hill when My Darling Wife calls on the radio saying that someone to the north of us said there was a fire between us somewhere. We just crested the hill and I told her that we could see the smoke and there was definitely a fire north of our place and to start calling the fire department and the neighbors because it was putting up a lot of smoke. Maybe I should start calling My Darling Wife, The Dispatcher any more. She seems to be doing that a lot.<br />n<br />nThe way the wind was blowing I was really worried. The fire was not on my place but the wind was really blowing it that way and it was in some really rough country to get to. The Hired Hand wanted to get in front of the fire and try to put it out so it wouldn't advance towards the place. I told him that he was crazy. I was not getting in front of a fire that was putting up that much smoke, it was really thick by now, with the winds behind it. That was suicide and not what to do in this situation. My goal was to circle around it and start there. I was also gambling that the weather forecasters would be right. They said that after the frontal passage the winds would die down after a couple of hours and the humidity levels would come up which would give us an opportunity to get around the damn thing. With the amount of smoke the fire was putting out it still worried me but that's all I knew to do.<br />n<br />nSo we circled around to the west of the fire to get to it. It was in the rough, timbered country and we were the first ones there. This wasn't going to be fun. The Dispatcher had people coming our way and there was a guy showing up from the north at the same time so we started on the backside of the fire working one way putting out and the other guy went the other way. <br />n<br />nTo maker a long story short, about 6 hours later we got around it and the fire and it was not growing anymore. A couple of hours after the frontal passage the winds died down and the humidity levels definitely came up to give us the edge we needed to fight the damn thing. The county was trying to put a line around it with a road grader, awful rough country for that in the dark, and we were getting the edges cooled down. I had kept hearing rumors that someone had spotted a fire on my south end so with this fire under control and enough people around it, we headed out to check this rumor out. It was wrong, I could find nothing else but I was sure glad to have looked around, it made me feel better.<br />n<br />nIt was a damn long night with little sleep but the fire should be under control if the landowner just watches it. Do you have any concept how hard it is to fight fire in the dark on somebody else's place? I had a vague idea how the country laid but was not intimately familiar with it like I was our country. This made it really tough on all of us but the neighbors and the county were champs and we got it out. I've had enough of this shit. I am not a firefighter and My Darling Wife is not a dispatcher. I just wish it would get wet again and that the fire danger would ease so we wouldn't have to do this. Eventually it will happen but at this point, not soon enough for my taste.