Twenty-one firefighters from New York state are back home after helping fight fires in Montana.

The fire started on July 25 in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and has burned 3,000 acres, which is relatively small for a wildfire.

Forest ranger Steve Jackson, of Johnsonville, said fighting fires is a lot of work.

“There’s two ways that we can fight a fire directly, which means we’re right up next to the fire with hand tools,” he said.

If the fire is too big to close, Jackson said they can switch to an indirect strategy.

“Basically, we create a big box around it. We prep all the roads, boundaries, trails, whatever we can find to prep around the main fire and then we’ll back burn to eliminate those fuels and stop the wildfire from growing any bigger,” he said.