Photo provided by Cameron Abell, Billings Firefighters Finally, Firefighters Secure the Protection They Deserve After 20 Years of Fighting Gov. Steve Bullock will sign the firefighter health and safety bill into law on Thursday, April 18. Finally, the men and...

How Will Our Firefighters Fare at the Legislature This Time Around? The Firefighter Health and Safety Bill passed unanimously, 19-0, in the House Business and Labor Committee on April 3 at our Montana Legislature. Now it heads to the House...

Participants in a saw class in 2017. Photo courtesy of Cameron Abell, Billings Firefighters A Tired Refrain: Fighting for Obvious Health Coverage There is a sentence in the first article Prairie Populist published about the Firefighter Health and Safety Bill...

Jill and Jason Baker in their early days of dating. Photo Courtesy of Jill Baker Prairie Populist Remembers a Warrior, Fighter and Brother “We gather here today to pay respects to a warrior: at home, out in the field, and...

Feature photo of Jason and Jill Baker, courtesy of the Bakers. Jason Baker, Firefighter Health and Safety Bill Warrior, Loses Life to Cancer Prairie Populist mourns the loss of Great Falls City Firefighter Jason Baker, who lost his fight with Stage IV lung cancer Wednesday morning. Jason,...

Haven’t read our previous coverage on firefighters? Read our article about Jason Baker and his fight against cancer here. It doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while, the state legislature takes on a bill that is really a...

They have our backs. It’s time we had theirs. The cancer that seeps through Jason Baker’s skin is the result of a toxic soup that’s created when modern homes burn. Like all of Montana’s firefighters, Baker has the best protective...

Communities need to better protect themselves and their firefighters “Houses will grow back,” Paul told the crowd. He went on to explain that the lives of firefighters trying to defend a house cannot grow back so easily. Paul Chamberlin, a...

By Laura Nowlin  Through the vast spaces of central Montana flows the Musselshell River, connecting the mountains to the breaks and Martinsdale to the Missouri River.  To the casual observer it looks like a lazy, quiet stream, and the land...

We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends It’s been a rough fire season for Montana. We’ve had more than 1,500 fires. And depending on the source, they’ve burned somewhere between 937 and 1,380 square miles. Basically, we’re...