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2021 Fire
New video and images of fire threatening Red Lodge.
April 13, 2025
[Photos] [Video]
[Next Page - Big Lion]

On Sunday, June 13, 2021, we spotted a few wisps of smoke around Mount Maurice south of Red Lodge. It was a small fire started by a dirt biker who somehow managed to spill gas out of his bike and spark it. (He went to jail for his idiocy, and for not reporting it.) With the high winds, by Tuesday it had picked up into a full-fledged inferno that eventually burned 30,000 acres.

I wasn't expecting the fire to cover the five miles of relatively flat ground to threaten our house, but we were considering evacuation due to the thick smoke. The wind was blowing north-northeast, and if it had shifted more to the northwest, we would have had to leave. This was our first full year in Red Lodge, and it was an interesting introduction.

I didn't do anything with the images and videos I took except stick them on my external blog. With my newly-found interest in making videos with DaVinci Resolve, I decided to organize the pieces into a video. Actually much of the publication is comprised of the stills I took since (for some reason) I didn't take much video from the 5D Mark III. I've just never had a video-first mindset. I also processed the stills for addition to the web site in a new Robinson Draw Fire group.

To show Mount Maurice as it is today with its very visible scar diagonally across its north face, I launched the drone and got a few clips to include in the video. It would have been nice to have the drone back in 2021 to get above the houses and vehicles blocking our view of the carnage.


Video


Stills


Mount Maurice today, destruction to the left.


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