The Varrins quickly learned they had 20 minutes to leave. It’s remarkable how fast and how furious that fire was up our canyon." "The smoke came in so fast, and that was only in an hour. When Varrin woke up, she couldn’t see the mountains. We did not hear our neighbor pounding on our door telling us to evacuate. "We laid down to take a nap, my husband and I in one room, my daughter in another. They returned home at about 2:30 in the afternoon. That morning the family could only see wisps of the Bridger Foothills Fire, so they decided to go for a mountain bike ride. Highs climbed to 95 degrees as the humidity was dropping and the wind was picking up. We have a cabin there," Michelle Varrin says. "We actually live at Bridger Bowl Ski Area. The Varrin family, a few miles west of the Lapinskys, also had a chaotic Saturday afternoon. The Bridger Foothills Fire threatened homes and forced evacuations near the fire, which started near the 'M trail' just northeast of Bozeman, MT. People evacuating from Bridger Canyon, Sept.
They hightailed it to Livingston, and would never see their family home again. The Lapinskys collected some clothes, their computer and as much of their kids’ stuff as they could fit into their small car. We may not be home tonight,” Lapinsky says. "Seeing that smoke rolling over the top of the hill, I told my wife, ‘grab a bag. All was quiet until early Saturday afternoon: The couple spent a long, mostly sleepless night watching over their Bozeman home. Aric and his wife took the advice and sent their two children to spend the night at their grandmother’s house in Livingston. The Gallatin County Sheriff’s Department warned residents Friday evening to be prepared to evacuate just in case the new Bridger Foothills Fire worsened. I was raised in that house for many years, and we started our family up there just five years ago as well," Lapinsky says. They raised their kids there my father and aunts and uncles. "My grandparents actually had it built by family friends – the Harkins. The Lapinsky homestead was just off Bridger Canyon Drive and was one of 28 homes claimed Saturday by the Bridger Foothills Fire. It was very heartbreaking to see all of our family memories, me growing up as a child up there, too. "I was the first one on site to see the house. Aric Lapinsky will never forget what he saw. MTPR’s Edward O’Brien caught up with two evacuated families.īozeman’s Bridger Canyon evacuees were given one hour earlier this week to check on their homes and animals. These forests are rich in endemic species but massively impacted, and merit better representation in future plans for science and conservation in Andean countries.Coming off Montana’s most active fire weekend of the summer, residents in Bridger Canyon are using the current break in the weather to reflect and regroup from the damage incurred, and avoided, from the Bridger Foothills Fire. In conjunction with fossil evidence indicating the presence of SDTF in the Andes in the late Miocene, our data suggest that the disjunct small valley pockets of inter-Andean SDTF have persisted over millions of years. High DNA sequence divergence in Cyathostegia mathewsii, a shrub endemic to inter-Andean SDTF, indicates isolation for at least 5 million years of populations separated by only ca. In contrast to these mesic biomes, we present evidence for a different, older diversification history in seasonally dry tropical forests (SDTF) occupying rain-shadowed inter-Andean valleys. Most research and conservation attention in the Andes has focused on biomes such as rain forest, cloud forest, and páramo, where much plant species diversity is the hypothesized result of rapid speciation associated with the recent Andean orogeny. The Andes are the most species-rich global biodiversity hotspot.