Fires rage across northwest Montana

More than 50 fires are now burning in the Kootenai National Forest, according to fire management officer Dan Rose in the Supervisor’s Office in Libby. The rash of fires has created a strain on already-stretched resources and has left a number of fires unstaffed, but Gov. Steve Bullock’s declaration of a state of fire emergency Sunday may help provide much-needed resources for firefighting efforts.

The most significant fire activity on the forest is in north Lincoln County, where five fires have been grouped together into the Northeast Kootenai Complex. The complex encompasses fires in Dunn Creek, Weigel, Sunday Creek, Barnaby and Marston. It is under the command of Shawn Pearson’s Type II incident management team. Pearson and his management staff held a meeting in Trego Sunday evening in which they laid out the situation, their plans to contain the fires and the potential evacuation scenarios, should such a course of action be required.

The Marston fire is now at approximately 2,000 acres. Crews are working to establish a perimeter around the base of the mountain to contain the fire as it works its way off the slopes. Pearson said the risk to personnel was too great to attempt to fight the fire on the heavily sloped and rocky mountain terrain.

The Barnaby fire is much smaller, at 10 acres. Pearson said an assessment team determined it was unsafe to put firefighters on the ground in the area due to steep terrain, falling debris, rocks and snags. If needed, a heavy helicopter will make water drops on the fire.

Pearson said although the plan is in place, he doesn’t anticipate the need for evacuations. Should the fire breach his first containment line, he said they will recommend a stage 2 alert. Under stage 2, residents are advised to start moving large equipment, animals or preparing for the evacuation of people requiring assistance. If the second line, essentially the line between national forest land and private property, is breached, evacuations in the area will be ordered. Evacuations, he said, would be focused on areas at risk instead of general evacuations of the entire area.

Pearson’s team is managing 224 personnel, 16 engines, seven bulldozers, one excavator, six skidgons and six water tenders. Pearson said he has ordered 250 to 300 additional personnel to fight the fires, but with the level of fire activity in the region he said the likelihood of gaining additional resources is minimal.

“I’m not really confident we’re going to get those resources,” he said. “It’s just that tight for resources out there.”

Pearson said Sunday was the first day his team had helicopter support on the fires, even though they’d been in place for three days.

Operations manager Dave Lux said he anticipated being able to dedicate more resources to the fires at Marston and Barnaby because the Dunn and Weigel fires were 100 and 70 acres respectively, and both have established fire lines surrounding them. Lux said Weigel was in the mop-up stage and the Dunn fire was going back to the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation protection, so his teams on that fire would be rotated north to assist in Marston and Barnaby.

The fifth fire in the complex is at Sunday Creek, crossing the border between the Kootenai and Flathead national forests. The fire, as of Monday morning, was burning roughly 160 acres. Lux said the fire was a difficult one to fight, but crews are making progress.

“We’re working both flanks, but progress is slow,” he said. “We’re making progress, but this fire is far from over.”

In addition to Pearson’s Type II team, a type III team is also at work in the Kootenai. That team is working a series of fires in the Bull River valley, along the west side of the Bull River south of Bull Lake.

Rose said five fires are active in the Bull River corridor as of Monday afternoon. The fires, Hamilton, Star, Napoleon 1, Napoleon 2 and Government, are working their way down the mountain slopes toward private property.

Rose said the emergency declaration allows the use of Montana National Guard personnel and equipment to help fight the fires.

“Probably the biggest thing with the declaration is to be able to mobilize the national guard to help fight the fires,” he said. “They bring a lot of people to the table, as well as equipment and helicopters we can use to fight these fires.”

Fires are growing at Klatawa Lake in the Libby District and on Sawtooth Mountain near between Troy and the Idaho border. He said the fires are very similar, each burning between 100 and 150 acres.

Rose said the Forest Service was staffing 17 fires on the Kootenai as of Monday afternoon and have plans either in place or in process to staff an additional 12, once personnel and equipment become available.

With temperatures expected to spike upward toward mid-week, fire activity could increase. Hotter temperatures, combined with low relative humidity, could cause previous lightning strikes to suddenly flare into full-blown fires.

“What we’re concerned with right now, more than anything else, is new fires from hold-overs from the previous round of lightning,” he said. “We’ve picked up a couple of those already today.”

As temperatures rise, the threat of increasing wind also has firefighters concerned.

“The wind is a really bad thing for us, too,” Rose said. “Especially on the bigger fires, a strong wind can really cause problems.”