Firefighters focusing on protection
BOISE – With all available equipment and crews fully engaged on more than 40 large wildfires across the West on Tuesday, federal fire managers were shifting more resources from suppression to protecting high-value targets in the path of approaching flames.
“When we get into this time of the year, when fires are primarily in the high country with a lot of fuel and timber to burn, it makes more sense to incorporate a strategy of point protection,” said Rose Davis, a U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman at the national firefighting command center in Boise.
“We’re focusing on protecting community infrastructure, historical resources and precious watersheds,” she said. Idaho led the nation with 12 large wildfires Tuesday, including several on the fringes of rural mountain communities. The state Department of Environmental Quality issued what it said was its first-ever “red” air quality alert for the populous Boise Valley after drifting smoke from wildfires sent ozone pollution to unhealthy levels.
Across Idaho, more than 124 square miles of timber and range had burned. Federal fire managers said active fires were increasing in size and intensity due to hot, dry weather patterns. In addition, more thunderstorms were forecast through the Northern Rockies that will likely trigger several new fires.
“There is no real relief in sight,” said Rick Ochoa, national fire weather program manager for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. “We’re anticipating lightning storms in eastern Oregon through Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and afterward next week could turn hotter and drier.”
In Idaho, the focus for firefighters was saving homes, historic cabins and Forest Service facilities from the rapidly advancing flames. On the largest blaze in the state, the Potato fire near Stanley, crews wrapped old mining buildings and homes in fire-retardant material and rigged sprinklers on roofs. The cost of fighting the nearly three-week-old fire in the rugged Sawtooth mountains is $9.1 million thus far, with containment not expected until Aug. 28.
On the South Fork Complex, a series of fires 13 miles east of McCall, summer homes in the community of Yellow Pine were being fire-wrapped as was a U.S. Forest Service work center. To the north, crews on the Lightning fire two miles from the town of Riggins were working to keep flames away from the Chair Point Lookout, an unmanned Forest Service fire watch tower, as well as an electronic communications installation.
On the Nez Perce National Forest, a team was scrambling to wrap fire-retardant material around the Whitewater Wilderness Lodge, a remote guest ranch catering to rafters along the Salmon River. Officials were afraid that the Trout Creek fire on the Payette National Forest across the river would send burning embers over the water and ignite the ranch on the opposite bank.
“In previous years, fire has jumped the river, even as floaters were going by,” said Laura Smith, spokeswoman for the Nez Perce forest in Grangeville.
Crews were also working to fire-protect the historic Jim Moore cabin on the Salmon River, a popular stopping point for clients of whitewater rafting outfitters.
Montana
A wildfire that started Tuesday afternoon southeast of Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park grew to 512 acres by evening and briefly threatened some houses, fire officials said.
The Sappington Junction fire was burning in grass and sagebrush 16 miles southeast of Whitehall.
Jack de Golia, spokesman for the Dillon Interagency Dispatch Center, said some homes had been threatened, but that they were no longer at risk by 7:30 p.m. He said fire officials were still at the scene, and no information was available about the number of homes threatened.
The fire, reported at 1:15 p.m., was burning on private and state land, as well as land administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Meanwhile, the Gash Creek fire southwest of Victor was reported at 6,800 acres and 50 percent contained Tuesday evening.
The Ravalli County Sheriff’s Office has asked people in nine houses in the Smith Creek and Dry Creek areas to be prepared to leave in case they need to be evacuated. The blaze remained about a mile from the nearest home Tuesday.
The almost 32,000-acre Red Eagle fire near St. Mary showed little activity Tuesday.
The fire remained at 75 percent contained.
Elsewhere, the Big Creek fire southwest of Livingston had burned 12,134 acres and was 85 percent contained. The Sand Basin fire, sparked by lightning, had burned an estimated 200 acres in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
Washington
Soldiers from Fort Lewis were receiving additional training Tuesday before being sent to the front lines of two fires that have blackened more than 140 square miles in the north central part of the state.
The 550 U.S. Army troops from Task Force Blaze were to join line operations on Thursday, the U.S. Forest Service said.
The Tripod Complex of fires between Winthrop and Conconully grew to nearly 90,000 acres Monday.
In central Washington, the Flick Creek fire near Stehekin on Lake Chelan was 50 percent trailed Tuesday at about 4,350 acres, or about 6.7 square miles. Crews were managing the 4,523-acre Tinpan fire along the Entiat River trail as a wildland-use fire, meaning it will be allowed to burn naturally unless it threatens to run outside preset boundaries.