Editor's Notebook: Fire Season is upon us

Well if there was any doubt that fire season was officially upon us last Friday left little doubt.

Within what seemed like seconds of hearing the first clap of thunder here at the news office Fire Station #1 came alive across the street from us and the scanners started squawking out alerts of fires that were starting up all over the county.

Luckily the fires were contained within 24 hours. It seems weird to say that we are lucky that the fires were controlled after burning a combined few thousand acres, but it is true. We are living under extremely dry conditions this summer and the chances of a devastatingly large fire like the Elk's Complex and Pony's Fires a few years ago are very high. So yes, we got lucky last weekend.

There was a quick coordinated attack on the range fires before they could begin burning out of control. My family used to graze cattle on the land where the three fires north of Glenns Ferry burn and as reports began coming over the scanner describing where the fire was images of the land quickly popped into my mind.

It is dry country this year. Driving down Alkali Creek Road the grass resembles straw more then it does the tall green waving grass it was just a few months ago. This image and the thought of how quickly each fire could rage through the area or even merge together into even bigger and hungrier fire quickly had me worried that this could turn into one very big and devastating fire.

I quickly began receiving calls from people I know in the area saying the fires were moving fast and it didn't look good. So I went home on Friday night set on keeping a close watch on my work e-mails and my phone close to my side in order to make sure I did not miss anything important that I would need to get out to our readers for our emergency responders.

I am so happy to say that within 24 hours I got an e-mail from the BLM saying that all fires were contained or controlled. Due to a quick coordinated response by fire crews and ranchers disaster was diverted and what could have been a huge disaster ended up burning more ground then any of us could have wanted, but still so much better then it could have been.

Thank you to all of our emergency responders for your hard work and dedication to keeping all of us and our land safe.