Fire destroys logging equipment

At about 11 a.m. on Sunday, April 26, Devon Meyer called the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office to report a fire had consumed two pieces of equipment at a logging site on Bull Lake Road. Sheriff’s deputies and the Bull Lake Fire Department responded to the call, but the equipment was already completely destroyed.

The fire, which presumably began sometime the previous night, destroyed a Temco timber harvester and a Caterpillar de-limber. Clyde Miller, Chief of the Bull Lake Rural Fire District, said the equipment, when new, would be valued at more than $1 million.

Miller said his crew arrived on the scene immediately after officers from the sheriff’s department and quickly established a perimeter. Because the fire could easily have spread into wildlands, the fire management officer for the Three Rivers Ranger District was also notified. By that time, however, the fire had basically burnt itself out with the expensive equipment being the only casualties.

Miller brought representatives from other local agencies in to assist with the investigation. Captain Kirk Kraft of the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office joined Forest Service fire management officer Linda Hubbell and Bull Lake Rural Fire District battalion chief Jim Ward to initiate an investigation into the blaze.

The next day Miller made the decision to involve the state fire marshal’s office, and Deputy Fire Marshal Dawn Drollinger became involved in the investigation.

“Any time there’s something of an unusual nature we call the state,” Miller said.

In this case, what was unusual is that no specific cause of the fire could be established at the logging site.

“I used to work fire in Eastern Montana, and sometimes those combines would catch fire,” Miller said. “This isn’t the kind of equipment that usually just catches fire, so it’s unusual.”

Miller said he is unwilling to definitively categorize the fire as arson, but was leaning in that direction. The final determination will come from Drollinger.

Miller said his primary concern at this point is to root out the cause of the fire and provide that information to the property owner.

“We have a responsibility to the owner to do our due diligence and help find the source of the fire,” Miller said.

Lincoln County Sheriff Roby Bowe confirmed the cause of the fire is still under investigation by the State Fire Marshal.

The fire occurred in a subdivision near the intersection of Highway 56 and the Shoshone Trail near Bull Lake.