Terri Siddoway stood with her husband, Bert, in their driveway near Durkee on Wednesday morning, July 17, and watched a thunderstorm spread across the dry hills south of the Burnt River.

She saw one lightning bolt strike.

“Right after that there was smoke,” she said. “It was that quick.”

Bert, who is chief of the volunteer Burnt River Fire Protection Association, rushed toward the fire.

Soon after a second bolt, which Terri also saw, sparked another blaze farther west, along Cave Creek south of the Burnt River Canyon.

Firefighters, including air tankers dropping retardant, corralled the second fire later Wednesday, holding it to about 9.5 acres.

But the first blaze, known as the Durkee Fire, grew rapidly.

Although crews checked the spread on the east side, with aid from two converted jetliners dropping retardant — a DC-10 and a 737 — on Wednesday evening the wind shifted and freshened, pushing the fire north and west.

The fire, which was estimated at 2,700 acres on Friday morning, July 19 (previous estimates were as high as 7,500 acres), prompted the Baker County Sheriff’s Office to issue evacuation notices for several ranches and homes.

Terri Siddoway said on Thursday morning that she believes firefighters protected all the threatened homes during the night.

“It was a long night,” she said.

Michelle Owen used the same phrase.

She and her husband, Eric, live on the Powell Creek Ranch south of the Burnt River Canyon Road, a property owned by Eric’s father, Bruce.

Michelle Owen took a series of photographs depicting the spread of the fire. Around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday the fire crossed onto the Owen property, and by 6:20 p.m. it was spreading rapidly. A photo taken at 10:43 p.m. showed the bright orange glow as flames continued to consume tinder dry grass, sagebrush and juniper trees.

“It just looked scary,” Owen said.

A photo she took just before 7 a.m. on Thursday showed lingering smoke but no flames.

“Feeling hopeful that the day will get better,” Owen said. “Things look a lot better today.”

She expressed gratitude for the work of all the firefighters who helped protect homes.

Siddoway said Bert arrived home about midnight for a few hours of rest.

Her home, near the junction of Old Highway 30 and the Burnt River Canyon Road about a mile west of Durkee, is just outside the area under one of three evacuation levels.

An area nearest the fire is under Level 3 (leave now), while a section including along the Burnt River Canyon Road is at Level 2 (be prepared to leave). There’s also a smaller zone, closer to Highway 30, under Level 1 (be ready).

A regional management team will oversee the firefighting effort starting Thursday morning, said Larisa Bogardus, public information officer for the Bureau of Land Management’s Vale District.

That team had been managing the Cow Valley Fire in northern Malheur County, the biggest blaze in Oregon at 133,400 acres. The Cow Valley Fire hasn’t grown in the past few days, and is 77% contained.

Fire crews working on the Cow Valley Fire will be available to help with the Durkee Fire, according to a Thursday morning update from the management team.

Information about the Durkee Fire will be included with updates on the Facebook page for the Cow Valley Fire, which will be renamed to add the Durkee Fire, said Jessica Reed, public information officer for the management team.

Siddoway, who is president of the Durkee Community Corp, which manages the historic school in Durkee that serves as community center for the unincorporated town about 25 miles southeast of Baker City, said she was meeting with fire officials so they could use the property as a base.

Siddoway said she hopes fire crews will be able to prevent the blaze from spreading farther west into the Burnt River Canyon, where precipitous slopes make access very difficult.

She couldn’t see any flames as of 7:30 a.m. Thursday.

“But it’s so smoke it’s hard to tell,” she said.

Siddoway said flames spread rapidly after the lightning bolt.

Almost no rain has fallen since the start of June, and since July 5 the temperature has topped 90 every day, and gone over 100 on several days.

Siddoway said she and her husband have 70 cows, which are starting to have calves, on pasture they rented on the Powell Creek Ranch.

She said they haven’t been able to confirm whether their cattle got out safely.

Several local agencies responded to the fire on Wednesday, including the Lookout Glasgow Rural Fire Protection Association, Baker Rural Fire Department, Baker City Fire Department, Keating Rural Fire Protection District, North Powder, Powder River Rural Fire District and Baker County Emergency Management.

Wes Morgan, chief of the Powder River Rural District near Sumpter, said he arrived on the Powell Creek Ranch Wednesday evening with the district’s 3,000-gallon water truck.

Morgan said he was stationed at Bruce Owen’s home. He said firefighters from the Burnt River Fire Protection Association and BLM had used bulldozers to carve fire lines around the property, and he doused the area with 3,000 gallons of water.

Morgan estimated that the fire burned to within about a quarter mile of the home.

He said the fire during the night was most active on the west side, especially when flames reached thickets of juniper trees.

Those burned like torches, Morgan said.

He said he was released from structure protection around 1 a.m. on Thursday.

Morgan said he’s gratified to be able to help protect homes outside his district because he knows other agencies would do the same in his district if needed.

Amanda Bunch is feeling more confident that homes, including her own, are out of danger from the Durkee Fire.

But she’s still worried about her husband, Levi, who is among the dozens of firefighters trying to corral the blaze sparked by a lightning bolt on Wednesday morning, July 17.

And she fears for her friends’ and neighbors’ cattle that are on summer range and potentially in the fire’s path.

The Bunches live along the Burnt River Canyon Road just northwest of where the Burnt River emerges from its deep, steep and narrow canyon.

Amanda Bunch, who is visiting relatives in Roseburg with her two sons, Brim, who’s almost 3, and Rhen, who just turned 1, said there was an irrigated meadow, and the river itself, between their home and the fire when it grew rapidly on Wednesday night.

She said the fire burned very close to the home of their neighbors on the other side of the road, David and Edna Nygard.

Firefighters from multiple agencies were deployed Wednesday night to protect several homes, including the Nygards’, and no damage was reported.

Michelle Owen, who lives with her husband, Eric, on the Powell Creek Ranch south of the Burnt River, said on Thursday afternoon that she believes her home and others are safe.

But like Bunch, she worries about the fire, which started spreading rapidly Thursday afternoon, will overtake cattle.

Bunch said she and her husband don’t have any cattle grazing near the Durkee Fire; their herd is on Lookout Mountain north of Interstate 84.

The couple did lose cattle to the 2015 Cornet-Windy Ridge Fire, at 104,000 acres the biggest blaze in Baker County’s recorded history.

Bunch said that even if cattle escape the Durkee Fire, their owners will need to find a place to pasture the animals for the rest of the summer, which could be difficult and expensive.

She also said that even when cattle survive a fire they can sustain injuries, including burns and smoke inhalation, that can cause chronic problems, including making it harder for cows to bear calves in the future.