BOISE, Idaho — The Durkee Fire continues to burn in Eastern Oregon. As of July 24, it had burned over 244,000 acres.
The people of Huntington and the Rye Valley area have been asked to evacuate several days in a row, leaving their belongings and even cattle behind.
"I could tell it was going to be a pretty rough day," Blake Maxwell said. "The amount of smoke and the dark clouds going up in the sky."
Maxwell works for Soft Track Attack, a wildfire fighting company out of Montana. They're staff help out state and federal agencies fight wildfires around the country.
He is currently living in Boise for this wildfire season. On Friday, July 19, he got a call from a friend who lives in the Rye Valley area. He asked Maxwell to come and help with the flames on his range land.
"In a matter of two seconds, everything you could ever have could be gone, turned upside down," Maxwell said.
He arrived at his friend's property on Saturday, immediately with a job to do. Maxwell was using his dozer to dig lines.
"Take all vegetation off the grass on a eight-foot-wide blade," he said. "Dig it there to bare down to bare soil. So when fire reaches that line, hopefully it stops it in its tracks."
But it didn't.
"The fire and wind was blowing so strong," he said. "It was just jumping over that eight-foot berm that we had dug, and it just kept cooking along us. And every line we'd punched fire, it overran it."
Quickly, they had another issue.
"We realized that the fire was going to come out of the north and circle us, that we had to move cows different places," he said. "So we were trying to cut fences, it got real chaotic real quickly on us."
They had to leave 300 cattle behind. It was 150 pairs of mother and calves, he said.
"I watched fire corral these cows in the corner of a pasture," Maxwell said. "And I tried to get up there and cut the fence for them, and I couldn't quite get there in time."
A moment that is devastating for a rancher.
"When those ranchers lose all that, they don't have anything," Maxwell said. "So, a lot of those ranchers they may have to sell off most of their cows, take them to the sale barn, because they can't afford to feed them, because the grass their depending on is now ash on the ground."
At this time, they are unsure if the cattle survived because they haven't surveyed the area yet. Maxwell said if the cattle did survive, they are most likely sick or injured.
"It's not as simple as load them up in a trailer," Maxwell said. "Sometimes you're on 10-, 15-, or 20,000-acre pastures where they can roam 20,000 acres. It's hard to gather cows in 20,000 acres when it's going up in flames."
All this feels all to of familiar to Maxwell. He comes from a rodeo and ranching family. After graduating high school in 2016 Maxwell volunteered with his local fire department.
A report of a structure fire came in one day, and when Maxwell and the rest of the crew arrived on scene - it was Maxwell's family home in flames.
"We were trying to save what we could, cut fences for horses to run, free cows," Maxwell said.
His family lost their home and 320 cattle that day, he said. Ever since that day he was dedicated to fighting wildfires every summer.
"I go to California, I may not know ya, but I'll do what I can to save your house... and that's my way of giving back to people, because firefighter came in and tried to save my house."