• BROADUS, Mont. (AP) -- If there's one thing Brandon Packard doesn't want to repeat in his life, it's to be ejected at 200 mph from a crashing bomber.
• Those were the words that Chris Gnerer, a rancher in the rolling hills of southeastern Montana, remembers hearing from one of the Ellsworth Air Force crew members he helped rescue, only hours after their B-1B bomber began to disintegrate in midair, the Rapid City Journal reported (http://bit.ly/142BpQ4 ).
• Gnerer, a lean 33-year-old, was driving a dirt bike on the northern side of his 2,000-acre ranch that morning. It was clear day; warm and getting warmer.
• He was searching for stray cattle around 9 a.m. when an orange flame caught his eye. Gnerer turned to see an object explode in midair about seven miles away.
• Gnerer was awe-struck as he watched the object split into two flaming pieces. One exploded in a mushroom cloud on a neighboring ranch. The other quickly joined it, producing a matching cloud.
• Panicking, Gnerer called his wife. Krista Gnerer, a part-time nurse, was working in a town about 30 miles away that day.
• Gnerer told her he had seen something -- a comet, a piece of the sun, just something -- fall from the sky. He thought the world might be ending.
• Gnerer told his wife he would call her back and hung up.
• After the initial shock subsided, he realized the crashing object was probably a plane. Perhaps one of the military's B-1B Lancers that train over the area regularly.
• He called his neighbors -- spread at 10- and 15-mile intervals from his own property -- to warn them of a potential fire. At this time of year in the Montana plains, wildfires can spark easily and spread rapidly across the dry grass and sage brush.
• Determined to see the crash for himself, Gnerer hit the throttle and aimed his bike toward the smoke. He lost track of time. His adrenaline was pumping.
• Gnerer wasn't the first on scene. T.J. Cunningham, the owner of the ranch where the plane crashed, was already putting out a fire spreading from the wreckage.
• There was little left of the plane -- only a deep depression in the ground, two smoldering engines, what Gnerer thought was a chunk of the tail, and thousands of pieces of debris.
• Gnerer was surveying the wreckage when volunteer firefighters and a police officer arrived. The officer yelled at him: "Get the hell out of there right now."
• Gnerer approached the officer and asked if anyone had escaped from the plane.

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