PENDLETON — Jeff Hemphill, director of the Happy Canyon Night Show, was at the Happy Canyon grounds Tuesday, Sept. 6, preparing for upcoming festivities when his brother, Pilot Rock Fire Chief Brian Hemphill, called with news.

The message: “There’s a fire in our field.”

Jeff Hemphill, 45, flew from the Happy Canyon grounds and made his way to the field just south of the Red Lion Hotel Pendleton, where a wildfire was burning through terrain at alarming speeds. The fire had broken out just minutes before around 4 p.m.

“I knew my neighbor had a tractor,” he said.

At first, Hemphill said he wasn’t sure if his neighbor’s tractor had a disc, a piece of equipment that takes grass or wheat stubble and turns it into dirt. Such a tool can be invaluable in fighting fires, as it takes the fuel load away from the fire front and turns it into dirt.

Realizing he was short on time, he abandoned the idea of bringing his own disc and bolted to his neighbor’s, where he found a tractor and thankfully, a disc.

“I grabbed the tractor, hooked onto his disc, and went to work,” Hemphill said. “I’ve spent 25 years as a volunteer firefighter, so I know what it takes. The Pendleton Fire Department is a group of brothers to me, I know them all on a personal level.”

The Pendleton Fire Department saw Hemphill entering the battle against the wildfire, and knowing him well, provided him with a fire radio.

“They had faith in me that I knew what was going on,” he said. “Fire is always a possibility, all farmers are cognizant of what needs to be done safely.

Hemphill soon found himself driving through the hills and fields, carving up the earth to construct a fire line that managed to stop the flames dead in their tracks.

“Any time that we have a field fire and we have a disc, it is an automatic 30-foot defensive space that it gives us,” Pendleton Fire Chief Jim Critchley explained. “The farmers have been (fighting fires) a lot longer than I have, it’s great having them there. We tend to talk to each other before we hit the ground running so that it’s a safe operation. We can’t do it without everybody working together.”

Hemphill’s actions could very well have prevented the fire spreading farther, and limited the damage to roughly 60 acres.

“I think we probably lost about 40 acres, there was no crop there,” he said. “I am getting ready to seed it in October. It may have helped a little bit, fire is a useful tool in agriculture as long as it’s done in a controlled manner.”

The cause of the small wildfire is still unknown, though Critchley ruled out an electrical cause.