OLA, Idaho — The Paddock Fire came dangerously close to Ola’s two-classroom schoolhouse. But that schoolhouse has a tool to help fight the fire.

• The Paddock Fire came so close to Ola that it melted fences along the road into town.
• The more than 100-year-old schoolhouse is an official NOAA weather station and offers students the opportunity to participate in collecting current weather information.

(Below is the transcript of the broadcast report.)

The Paddock Fire was one of the largest fires to date in southwest Idaho, burning about 200,000 acres in three different counties. It came so close to Ola that it melted fences along the road into town.

To show you how close the Paddock Fire came to delaying the start of school in Ola? The burned hillside extended to within a mile of the schoolhouse.

I asked Principal Amy Davis that question.

“How worried were you about your back-to-school plans putting some things on hold? First of all, some of our families were evacuated, some parents were out fighting, we were given evacuation orders and our firefighters had to be taken care of, so everything was chaotic for a day and then it all settled down, but I was concerned about how quickly our families would be able to get back and focus.”

This is where new technology helps old technology. The schoolhouse, which is over 100 years old, is an official NOAA weather station, Davis explains.

“They had already set up the station and it told them the dew point, the humidity, the amount of precipitation, the wind speed, what they were doing at night and in the morning, and they could use that to deploy their resources against the fire.”

And the older children play a big role in this.

“They come out here and open this box, and this one tells us the current temperature. They also get the highs and lows for the last 24 hours, and on the weekend they get the history of what happened over the weekend.

The Paddock Fire truly brought out the best in each of us.

“And this community always comes together, whether it’s a fire or a school building, we always come together.”