My brother had rented an alfalfa hay farm west of Blackfoot Idaho about 23 miles. It was mid-summer 2000 and time to harvest a crop of hay from the farm. I had gone to the field with him to help him harvest his hay. The time was about 9:00 A.M. We had been seeing lightening strike all around us. It was not close; we thought it might be 10 miles away on the west of us and 20 to 30 miles away on the east. We could see fires start at the sites of the lightning strikes. At the time it seemed like a long way for the fire to come to us. My brother went to another field to work and I stayed in the same field and began to stack hay. By late afternoon, about 4 or 5 P.M. the fire was near the field. I moved the aluminum sprinkler irrigation pipes back into the field from around the edge so the fire would not damage them. They had been moved out of the field to cut the alfalfa hay and were sitting out in the brush and dry grass of the desert, which was around the field. It was a good idea to move the pipe because it was not long until the fire came close to the field. There were all sorts of flying insects flying in front of the fire as it went along. There was a lot of smoke too. I got in the smoke to the point of not being able to see where I was going when I was leaving the edge of the field after moving the pipes. The fire did not linger long but went on its way down the lava beds. The Bureau of Land Management had a plane up above spreading fire retardant. It was a hot dirty fire that kind of made its own wind as it moved along. There were many such fires scattered around east Idaho at that time. There was a dozer going around the neighbor’s grain field which was ready to harvest and very dry. They were able to prevent that field from burning. I was never in danger as long as I could get to the alfalfa field.

Delwyn Stander