Brown talks lessons learned from Lodgepole Complex Fire

Northern Ag Network owner and rancher Taylor Brown spoke to the Montana State University-Northern's Collegiate Stockgrowers Saturday night, where he thanked the group for helping him recover from the Lodgepole Complex Fire and talked about lessons he learned from the incident.

Brown, who is also a former state senator, was the keynote speaker at the stockgrowers annual Meet-N-Greet, the stockgrowers' annual fundraiser.

The Lodgepole Complex Fire began July 19 and scorched 270,723 acres and consumed 16 homes, the Incident Information page said.

Brown's Sand Springs ranch, that borders Highway 200, was among the properties that were in the line of the fire. The fire, he said, came within 20 feet of the main house, about 100 yards of his horse barn, and was stopped three times at his mailbox. Ten miles of highway fence was damaged.

Barry Francis, public relations officer for the stockgrowers, called Brown two days after the fire started and asked what he and members of the group could do to help Brown and other ranchers in the area.

"And I said, 'Barry, if you guys want to come fence, we could sure use the help,'" Brown said.

Francis and stockgrowers Cooper Merrill, Michael Peter, Luke Rech and Chris Brekke arrived Monday morning when the fire had barely passed. He said they helped repair 33 miles of interior fencing on Brown's ranch.

"And we will never forget that, we will never forget that," Brown said. "Garfield County will never forget that."

Though he has ranched a longtime, Brown said he had never been the recipient of help in a wildfire before.

There were some lessons that Brown said he learned from the situation.

The first lesson, Brown said, is that when there is a disaster or people go to help in a disaster, they should figure out what supplies are needed beforehand. He said a lot of time can be wasted otherwise.

He said Skip King, the owner of five Ace Hardware stores in eastern Montana called him soon after the fire began. King asked what was needed and said Brown could have anything from his stores.

Brown told King he needed chop saw blades to cut up pieces of drill stem that were later used for fence posts.

A large box of chop saw blades and a $1,300 new chop saw was delivered and without a receipt.

"I tell you, I will not forget Ace Hardware," he said.

"When your customer needs you that's the time where you can develop these customer relationships," Brown said.

He said when people want to help, they also need to help in the right way.

Volunteers from a church group in Ohio came to the ranch and brought with them three pallets of 15-and-a-half inch, high-gauge barbed wire.

"We had to tell them we just can't use that," Brown said.

He said the lesson is people can't just bring what they think people might need.

When people come to volunteer to help in a disaster, Brown said, volunteers should come self-contained.

"Come ready to go to work and come with your own self-contained set up," he said, such as a trailer or a tent.

He said that when the stockgrowers helped out on his ranch they stayed in an empty trailer house on the property.

People should also bring their own food and supplies.

"If you show up with six people from Ohio and say 'we are going to need to feed them all tonight, Mother, every night for the next five nights,' and she is already just as stressed as everybody else, it just doesn't work," Brown said.

He said there were hunters from Missoula who came with their own trailer, Bobcat and ATV and did not need anything else.

"And we didn't have to take care of them. They just showed up and went to work," Brown said.

The importance of designating responsibility in a disaster is another important lesson, Brown said.

He said that when fighting the fire on his ranch one person was in charge of hay, another fencing supplies and another in charge of money.

When people put out their cellphone numbers saying they want supplies, Brown said, it is important that a person responds right away. People, he said, aren't going to be as eager to donate time or supplies weeks later, so designating responsibility will ensure the response is more organized.

If money is going to be collected, Brown said, it should be handled at the local level and by somebody with impeccable integrity.

"You have to have somebody handling that money that they know 100 percent of that money will go to somebody who will need it," Brown said.

He said a person with impeccable integrity can raise a lot of money.

People should not raise money using a Go Fund Me account, he said, because a percentage of that money will go to Go Fund Me.

People who are the victims of a disaster, he said, should think ahead about what they will need later, too.

He said two people called him recently asking him what he needed at that moment. Brown said, he would later need grass seed, an air seeder and somebody who could operate a road grader to help fix damaged roads.

Brown said that in a disaster publicity matters and it is important to get the word out quickly about a situation and tell the story.

"When the chips are absolutely down, it is the relationships that make the difference," he said.