Gallatin County Sheriff Brian Gootkin said 10 buildings have burned. He said they are still determining how many of those were homes. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

The work of fighting the fire will continue today. Pyrah said they’re trying to keep it at the same size. By this afternoon, he said, they’ll have three 20-person hand crews working the most remote parts of the burn area, building fire line and trying to keep its perimeter from expanding. They have four helicopters and several pieces of large equipment.

Pyrah said containing about a fifth of the fire is good progress. But there’s no time to celebrate.

“We’ve got four-fifths of the way to go,” he said.

At least three residents who lost their homes were in the crowd, including Mark McMurtry, who has lived there for more than two decades.

McMurtry and his two border collies left his house in a hurry Monday night when the fire came running for his house. He said it traversed a distance of a half-mile in a matter of minutes, putting him face-to-face with a wall of flames and giving him just enough time to grab a few belongings and the dogs and jump in his truck.

He’d made preparations around his house just in case a fire came. A fire hose and water sources were available, as was a sprinkler for his roof. But this blaze moved fast and came from a direction that made his preparations all but useless.

“If it came from any other direction, I could put a fire out,” he said.

He said he is looking into acquiring a travel trailer and might spend the winter in the Reese Creek area, but he’s not yet sure what’s next for him.

Some locals have offered help in finding a place to sleep for those who have been displaced. Some have gathered truckloads of supplies to give to fire victims. No evacuations have been ordered but a Red Cross representative said shelters in Bozeman and Belgrade are on standby in case people are forced from their homes.

Without an evacuation order in place, several people stuck around to fight alongside the firefighters. Weston Lewis, who owns a cabin there with some friends, is one such person. He hasn’t slept much since Monday but his 10 acres and his cabin have been untouched.

He and his friends have stayed up each night snuffing out hot spots.

“We just try to keep an eye out for open flames,” Lewis said. “If we see it, we go over with shovels and try to put it out. Every couple of hours we go back and do it some more.”

They have owned the off-grid cabin for about three years. On Monday, he was on his way to town when the fire started. He didn’t come back until late that night. He gives credit to a neighbor for keeping the fire off his land by using a tractor to keep the flames from advancing.

He hasn’t gone back to work since the fire started. Helicopters have been flying over him every few seconds, except at night, when darkness prevents them from hitting their spots. Blackened ground is visible outside his door, as is a red stripe where a tanker dumped retardant. He said the air smells of burning mulch.

Other residents have stayed away since Monday. Chris Thompson and his wife Nevada were in their Belgrade office when it started. He first saw the smoke when he left to get gas.

“It looked like a volcano coming out of the hills,” Thompson said Wednesday afternoon.

He and his wife live in an off-grid home there. It’s been spared by the fire so far, but he said they hadn’t been back home yet. They’ve stayed at his wife’s massage therapy office in Belgrade, keeping track of the happenings through social media.

He and his wife set up a fundraiser on Facebook to raise money for the victims. They believe at least six homes have been lost.

He added that people have donated household items, too, like diapers and kids’ clothing. They’ve sent three truckloads of things to Clarkston from Belgrade. A tent for distribution has been set up at a house not far from the fire station.

Thompson said he and his family were thinking about going home on Wednesday but weren’t sure if they wanted to be close to the fire.

“There’s something a bit unnerving about falling asleep with flames raging out your window,” Thompson said.