“Some of the stuff is really useful to us, some of it is not so much. I appreciate what people have been sending, but it’s just one of those deals where I don’t think people understand what we’re doing or how we’re doing it,” Rosebud County Fire Chief Rod Dressback said. “Right now, I’m sitting with a large quantity of sunscreen. Sunscreen is not something we pay attention to putting on.”

He added that non-perishable foods like beef jerky, granola bars and canned foods — Chef Boyardee, specifically — are far more useful.

Looking west

Following their dramatic sweep through hundreds of thousands of acres of range land in Garfield and Petroleum Counties in late July, the four fires that made up the Lodgepole Complex have been out for weeks. That they didn’t grow beyond their eventual footprint is in large part because local ranchers and volunteer firefighters gave up sleep, work and supplies during the desperate fight to save their livelihoods. Some lost cattle, and nearly all who were affected had miles of livestock fencing and broad swaths of their pastures razed by the fires.