After a week working in the heat and the smoke and the black of night to protect homes from the worst outbreak of wildfires in Baker County history, Sean Lee can no longer say with any certainty where he was on which day.

And Lee, chief of the Baker Rural Fire Protection District, is hardly alone in feeling frazzled.

Volunteer-run fire districts and rangeland fire protection associations across the county and region have been engaged in the constant campaign to save homes and other structures.

As of Wednesday morning, July 24, there were no reports of any homes being destroyed despite fires that have blackened more than 260,000 acres.

That’s almost 8% of the county’s land, and much of it is rangeland that ranchers depend on for spring, summer and fall grazing for their cattle.

Lee said on Wednesday morning that the success at saving structures is a testament to the efforts of dozens of volunteers, including ranchers and other property owners.

“Everybody has been involved and everybody has done a lot of hard work,” Lee said.

Buzz Harper agreed.

Harper is chief of the Keating Rural Fire Protection District.

“If it wasn’t for the teamwork, houses would have burned,” Harper said on Wednesday morning.

Like Lee, Harper said he and other volunteers from his district have been dispatched to multiple properties threatened by the Durkee Fire — the biggest ever in Baker County — and by fires started by lightning on July 22 north of Interstate 84.

Both the Baker Rural and Keating districts worked to protect Suzan and Keith Jones’ home along Clarks Creek east of Bridgeport.

Then they were sent to the Vandecar and Manning Creek road area north of Durkee after lightning started multiple fires on Monday afternoon.

“Running from house to house, incident to incident,” Harper said. “Running all over the place. We get sleep when we can.”

Both Harper and Lee said that while striving to protect homes they have had to balance the need to have volunteers and equipment available in their own districts to respond, if necessary, to fires there.

Harper, who has been a firefighter for 32 years, said he’s never seen a worse wildfire situation in Baker County.

“This is the biggest thing that we’ll ever see,” he said.

Lee said fluctuating weather, including shifting winds, triple-digit temperatures and kiln-like humidity levels, has created “erratic fire behavior.”

He said the conditions have been so dangerous, including steep terrain that’s impossible to reach with fire engines, that no matter how many firefighters were available, they would not have been able to stop the flames from spreading.

“When it’s burning seven thousand acres in a matter of hours, you can’t put people out in front of it,” Lee said. “It doesn’t matter how many resources you have, there’s nothing you can do about that.”