The smoke and flames were impressive enough, but Clint Swain will never forget the sound of the Raines Fire sweeping over him on Friday in the South Fork of the Salmon River canyon.
"It sounded like a 747 jet with its engines on full blast," Swain said of the firestorm that rushed through the Copenhaver subdivision about a mile south of the main Salmon River.
It was a lonely battle, but Swain, two other cabin owners and three firefighters managed to save seven of the nine cabins situated in the swath of private land surrounded by the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.
Two cabins were lost in the fire, which scorched the surrounding hillsides and which used its power to jump to the north side of the Salmon River.
Swain, 30, owner of a McCall excavation service, went to Copenhaver last week when he heard the Raines fire had the potential to come through.
The cabins are owned mostly by Valley County residents who use them for hunting, fishing or just getting away from the bustle of a resort community, Swain said. The parcels are only accessible by air and jet boat.
Just a Few Defenders
Swain and full-time Copenhaver residents Duane and Alberta Smith were the only property owners on hand when the fire began to make its destructive run Friday afternoon. They were aided by three firefighters, which was the most fire managers could spare given the large numbers of blazes through the region.
Earlier in the week, however, additional firefighters had set up pumps to pull water from the South Fork into sprinklers and fire nozzles to wet down the wooden cabins and surrounding grasslands.
"I saw them breaking out their gear and I figured this would be very defensible, not a big deal," Swain said this week.
He hoped the Raines Fire would end up like the Burgdorf Junction Fire of 2000, which barely missed Copenhaver because an intentionally set backfire had cleared away all the burnable grasses.
But Swain knew by late afternoon that Friday would be different. That was when winds began to whip up and the white smoke he had been watching up the canyon for days turned dark.
He crossed the river in a cable car that provides access to the only road in the area and drove up the South Fork on his ATV to scout what was happening. Even for a nine-year veteran of the Donnelly fire department, what he saw gave him chills.
"The fire was in the trees and crowning, trying to jump the river," Swain said. "I saw a spot fire that had started across the road, but by the time I got there it was 30 feet by 30 feet and growing by the second."
End of a Stove Pipe
He sped as fast as he could back to the cable car, dodging burning snags that had fallen in the road ahead of him and outracing raging flanges that seemed to keep pace with his four-wheeler.
As the small band of defenders desperately manned the hoses, conditions worsened.
"You couldn't see maybe more than 50 feet, the smoke was gray and the wind was blowing horizontal and there was a mad fury of flames blowing through," Swain said. "It just felt like you were at the end of a stove pipe."
The flames first claimed the Badley cabin at the south end of the subdivision, then the two story Kimble cabin. The howl of the wind was now punctuated by the sound of gasoline cans and propane tanks exploding and ammunition igniting inside those buildings.
Swain began to glance at the waters of the South Fork, planning an escape to the middle of river if the situation became much worse.
Then, what he estimated to be 40 mile per hour winds blew the flames overhead and through the tops of trees, rather than along the ground, enveloping him in a searing, glowing cocoon. "I kept dousing myself as well as the fire, it was so hot," he said.
Almost mockingly, the flames that had passed over to the north then changed direction in the swirling winds and began to march southward, back toward the cabins. Again there were explosions, this time from the gas tanks of his ATV and those belonging to others across the river that were being incinerated.
Finally, after what Swain estimated to be 90 minutes of intense activity, the flames began to subside and the danger lessened. But he and other property owners, who arrived later that night, kept vigil with hoses against ever-present embers that fell from the darkness.
Swain especially remembers one point in the evening when the winds again shifted and the smoke cleared, revealing small fires burning on every hillside he could see around him.
"It looked like there were people with orange torches standing 20 feet apart," he said. "There were orange glowing spots all over the place the whole night."
On Saturday, when he walked back to his jet boat, it was through a new landscape. "It almost looked like you were walking on the moon," he said. "Places elk used to hide in are now totally open."
