"The jaws unit is replacing an old 1994 unit," Punkin-Evergreen VFD Chief Rick Stevens said. "Highway 150 is our main source of accidents because it gets a lot of traffic. We also mutual aid with other departments for 18-wheeler accidents."

The new Jaws of Life has already been used four times since being put into service.

Chief Stevens is glad to have these increased capabilities for his department. "We have responded to a variety of critical calls in our community including swift water rescue, aircraft crash, fires and vehicle accidents," Chief Stevens said. "In 2017 the Boy Scouts of America will be opening a 4,000-acre camp with a large lake in our service area. We want to be prepared with training and equipment, should the need arise."

Measured individually, these recent wildfires were smaller than some recorded in prior decades. Burn complexes of 3 million acres or more struck the mountains of British Columbia and Alberta in 1950, Idaho and Montana in 1910, and New Brunswick in 1825. A cross section taken from an ancient Ponderosa pine in western Montana revealed scars from no less than 20 fires dating clear back to 1612, all but one of them occurring prior to 1892. The potential for wildfires to damage railway property and disrupt service has been around since the first locomotives breathed steam.

Additional details about the deal, which was finalized this week, will be released during Gov. Steve Bullock's fire briefing in Butte Friday.

The helicopters were barred last year from responding to fires in national forests and U.S. Bureau of Land Management land because federal standards require they use smaller buckets to scoop water. The issue sparked tension between state and federal officials with a shortage of resources available to fight blazes during an active fire season last year across the West.

The five modified Bell UH-1H helicopters have increased power that enables them to carry 324-gallon buckets. However, U.S. Forest Service policy, developed after helicopter crashes in the past, requires aircraft of that type to carry water-scooping buckets 100 gallons smaller.

The issue is specific to Montana's helicopters and not any other state's aircraft of equipment, Forest Service officials previously said.