These photos, some of the best nighttime fire photos I have ever seen, were taken by Jerry Dodrill, and are used here with his permission. They depict the first evening of the Round Fire, Friday, February 6, 2015, north of Bishop, California that burned 40 homes and 7,000 acres  Before Mr. Dodrill became a professional photographer, in the 1990s he was a wildland firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service on Stanislaus Crew 2 for three seasons.

Mr. Dodrill told us he had never seen fire behavior like he saw Friday. He wrote about it on his Wilderness Exposures blog, which has more photos of the fire:

A friend of mine who is on the local fire crew reported that they were burned over and all personnel had to run for their lives. Late in the evening I had a little time to break away to take some pictures of the fire, and just couldn’t believe what I saw. The scene was right out of hell, with fire burning every direction up and down Sherwin Grade. Flame lengths easily exceeded a hundred feet and ran up the slopes of Wheeler Crest faster than a speeding car.