Extra resources help minimize fire damage

July has been an active month for fire-fighting activity in Lincoln County. In addition to unseasonably high temperatures and low stream-flows, the area has been plagued with several arson fires in recent months. At a meeting with county commissioners last week, Kootenai National Forest Supervisor Chris Savage credited the presence and availability of above-normal levels of firefighting resources to the area for the lack of any devastating fires, such as those that have occurred in other parts of the region.

In addition to the area’s usual fire-fighting complement, composed of the Libby Volunteer Fire Department, the Libby Rural Fire Department and crews from the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and the United States Forest Service, Libby Airport is playing host to additional equipment and personnel.

Currently stationed at the airport are four fire-fighting helicopters, including a sky-crane, a K-Max airship and a rappel chopper with its crew from the Gallatin area near Bozeman.

The sky-crane is a huge helicopter equipped with a 2,000-gallon bucket. The hose attached to the contraption can fill the bucket in 45 seconds, said Brady Thompson, a firefighter stationed at Libby airport. The K-Max helicopter is a single-operator craft capable of delivering 700 gallons of water to a fire.

The other two choppers, one a more modern Bell 407 and the other resembling a Vietnam War-era Huey, are used primarily for crew deployment and supply, Thompson said.

The Bell 407 usually carries a pilot and a ship manager, as well as two fully-geared firefighters to the scene of a fire. The two firefighters, with all of their gear, represent the “initial attack” on forest fires in hard-to-reach areas.

The other craft carries a much larger crew, the Gallatin rappel crew. These firefighters deploy directly to the fire via rappel lines to carry out initial attack and fire suppression. Savage said the effectiveness of the Gallatin crew, combined with the rough terrain of the Kootenai National Forest, have prompted him to work toward transitioning the Kootenai National Forest helitack team into a rappel crew for 2016.

During last Thursday’s arson fires in the Pipe Creek area of Libby, two helicopters were immediately deployed. The first dropped two firefighters to the blaze near the Lincoln County landfill, then circled overhead to monitor for additional fires. Two other fires were spotted, one near Bobtail Cutoff and one near Blue Creek Road. Both were suppressed by Forest Service and Libby Rural Fire Department crews within minutes of discovery, preventing significant damage.