Goat Rock Complex fires returning to local authority

Warmer temperatures and lower relative humidity caused visible plumes of smoke to rise from fires in the Kootenai National Forest during the past weekend, but officials are confident the worst is over as autumn weather dominates the coming forecast. The Type-II Rocky Mountain incident management team responsible for the Goat Rock Complex of fires in the forest is officially turning over management of the fires to the United States Forest Service as of Monday afternoon.

“The current temperatures and the moisture expected this week is going to slow the fires to the point that local resources will be able to handle them,” Goat Rock Complex public information officer Andy Rothleutner said.

In response to the changing situation, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office issued an order rescinding all previous pre-evacuation notices in Lincoln County.

“The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office has cancelled the pre-evacuation order for the Bull Lake area, effective Tuesday, Sept. 15,” Sheriff Roby Bowe wrote in the release. “The related fires showed limited activity over the last week and predicted cooler and wetter weather for the next two weeks will further lessen the concern for fire growth.  After discussion with the Goat Rock Complex fire management team the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office is comfortable lifting pre-evacuation notices related to the Bull Lake area.

“There are no remaining pre-evacuation orders in effect.  All pre-evacuation orders issued by the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office have been rescinded.”

Kootenai National Forest fire management officer Dan Rose said this year was the worst year for fire loss since 2000, when 259 fires consumed approximately 45,000 acres of national forest land.

“This year we had 154 fires burn slightly under 33,000 acres,” Rose said. “A lot of smaller fires happened early in the season, but the bulk of the acreage burn was after Aug. 10, when the lightning moved in.”

Rose said the forest averaged 131 fires per year between 2001 and 2014, but the total amount of acres lost was just 6,500.

He said the Forest Service is prepared to handle the remaining work to be done on the fires, which will be essentially monitoring the fires and making sure the fire lines are maintained until the snows fall and officially end the fire season.

“It’s all in really good shape,” he said. “They’ve done a really good job with it. We just got done with our transfer of command meeting with the team and we’re going to follow the same plan they had in place, which is to rehabilitate the lines as needed and continue to monitor the fires.”

Although nearly 33,000 acres of forest were lost to the blazes, only one pending timber sale on the forest was impacted.

“Nothing burned in an active timber sale,” he said. “But as far as stuff we had planned, the Marston fire burned in the Galton project area.”

Rothleutner said the incident management team appreciated the community’s support as they worked to contain and control the fires.

“The team would like to thank the community for how welcoming and helping they were,” he said. “We can’t do this work without a supportive community.”