Country living has a lot going for it, especially for a photographer like me. It’s heaven for wildlife viewing, outdoor activities and living the laid back life. Particularly for retirees.

But like a lot of things in life, there is a cost. For us three major costs are power outages, road closures and fire. Fire is key as we have no fire services where we are. It’s do the best you can for home protection. For the big threat, forest fires, we count on Forestry personnel to come to our rescue. And they do a great job. Some people grumble that the good old days were better, where the teams were made up of those they could drag from the bars and conscript on the road. Then they fought with anything at any time, day or night.

Now there are safety measurements in place, training requirements and high tech equipment at their disposal. Seven years ago I documented a forest fire close to us across the lake. That will be another blog.

Yesterday on the way home from town we came across a fire down the road from us. I had the opportunity to capture the initial stages of the fire fight and thought you might like to see them.

The fire started when a tree was blown over and took down a power pole.

This started the fire going up the power line right of way.

As I watched and listened to the fire move, I was again struck by how beautiful fire is..

Very quickly the first responders arrived and started traffic control as the power lines draped above the highway. And word circulated that planes and ground teams were on their way.

To the sound of a plane’s engines we watched the spotter plane come into sight and immediately assess the situation in several passes over the fire.

And right behind it were the four water bombers.

They too flew over and into the smoke..quite an eerie sight..

These bombers skim over water to fill their tanks which is exciting to watch and requires amazing nerve. Especially at this time of year when spring run off has pushed a lot of logs and other debris out onto the lake.

And then, in a row, they passed over the fire and dropped their loads of water. I am always amazed at how powerful and beautiful the fall of the water is.

They had everything under control within about 12 hours and our power was restored.

This was a reminder of what a dry summer could bring us.
Thanks to all of them!!!

Categories: Fire, fire fighting, Forest fire, spotting plane, water bombers

Tags: Fire, Fire fighting, Forest fires, Spotting plane, Water bombers