Riding shotgun in an SUV with three of his crew members, Jake Novitsky spotted the smoke roiling up from the Elmo, Montana, wildfire when they were a mile or two out.

“My first reaction was, this is a good one. It’ll take a little bit to put this fire out,” he said.

Novitsky, 34, of New Ringgold, is a forester who works with a team of 20 wildfire fighters called a “hand crew.”

He’s the crew boss, leading his team in digging trenches and extinguishing hotspots so the wildfire can be contained.

When they got the call to help contain the Elmo blaze, the fire had burned about 700 acres. When they arrived, less than three days later, driven by high temperatures and strong winds, it had devoured 21,000 acres of grass and woodland.

“It burned up a lot of acreage, timber with grass underneath. It was really hot, really dry, and really, really windy,” Novitsky said.

Long, hard days

Novitsky’s crew left Harrisburg on July 31, driving two and a half days to reach Elmo, Montana.

They didn’t return to Pennsylvania until Aug. 18.

“We were pretty close to the fire. We worked from 7 or 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., ate dinner, took showers if they were available,” he said. “Then you went to bed and woke up the next morning and you did it all over again.”

Novitsky’s crew “mopped up” and made sure all the hot spots and fires were completely extinguished within a certain area.

They “worked around the houses left standing so they wouldn’t burn, and made sure the fire didn’t jump the line,” he said.

Those “hand lines” are dug to be twice as wide as the flames are tall.

“If you have 2-foot-tall flames, you dig a 4-foot-wide hand line,” he said.

They worked with a “skidgen,” an off-road tank vehicle filled with water.

“They followed that, putting out the hot spots and making sure the fire didn’t cross our control lines,” Novitsky said.

As Novitsky’s crew dug and doused, other wildfire fighters worked with bulldozers and other heavy equipment as helicopters bombed the blaze with water and flame retardant.

“A lot of people don’t realize when we go out there, we don’t get to go to hotels. We sleep out in tents. We work 14-18 hours a day,” he said.

The road to Elmo

Novitsky explained how the national wildfire help system works.

Specially trained wildfire crews are listed on a national roster. States that need help choose crews who have specific skills.

“A hand crew is a 20-person team that helps suppress wildfires,” Novitsky said.

For example, “we dig ditches. Pretty much you put a ring around the fire.”

As they drove, they were given a “resource order. The state dispatch assigns a location, and where to go and who to report to,” he said.

When they arrived at Elmo, they went to the incident command post, where they were assigned a section of the fire in which to work.

“We pretty much sized it up - weather, terrain, fuel, who our boss is, where our escape routes and safety zones are, and what other teams are doing. We learned the plan of attack,” he said.

Novitsky was no stranger to the routine: He’s fought about 18 large wildfires throughout the country.

A forester’s deep roots

Novitsky became a forester for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources in March 2012, working in the 30,000-acre Weiser Forest District, which covers Schuylkill, Carbon, Dauphin, Columbia, Lebanon, Montour and Northumberland counties.

“My father got me into the outdoors at a young age,” he said. “I love the outdoors. I couldn’t see myself sitting behind a desk. I needed to do something outside.”

About the Elmo wildfire

The wildfire started July 29; investigators are working to find the cause.

As of Aug. 23, it had consumed over 21,300 acres in the Treasure State, burning down five homes and forcing the residents of 150 homes in the adjacent Lake Mary Ronan area to be evacuated.