Blazes pop up around Kootenai

Firefighters have responded to a score of small blazes sparked by an electrical storm that traveled across the Kootenai National Forest early last Wednesday.

The storm left a trail of about 20 fires, many of which traced a line from the Montana-Idaho line in the Clark Fork area northeast along Lake Koocanusa to the Ten Lakes Scenic Area along the Canadian border, said Steve LeFever at the KNF fire dispatch center. Most were small spot fires less than an acre in size, but one — dubbed the Dam View Fire — grew to about five acres before being extinguished late last week. Located across the Kootenai River from Canoe Gulch, the fire was attacked by 16 smoke jumpers assisted by a helicopter that dumped buckets of water.

By Monday, a fire in the Yaak's Rock Candy Mountain area had grown to "a couple acres," LeFever said. Single-engine air tankers dropped on the fire Sunday, and a helicopter was dispatched on Monday. The Forest Service was hoping to get some smoke jumpers to the fire later in the day, LeFever said.

"If we can get all the resources on that, we can maybe get that stopped tonight," he said. "It's in pretty inaccessible terrain, pretty brushy."

A number of local contract firefighters and some Forest Service incident management teams have been dispatched to large fires in the Billings and Miles City areas, LeFever said.

The Kootenai's largest fire of the season so far has been the Warex Fire on the Rexford Ranger District. Located east of Montana Highway 37 near Rocky Gorge, the fire grew to 49 acres before being declared 100-percent contained on July 8.