Bond set for two men in arson case, continued

A preliminary hearing was scheduled in justice court Sept. 11 for Clayton Glen Peacock, 21, and Shang Beighey, 18. Peacock is charged with five counts of arson, and Beighey with four counts. All charges are felonies.

Beitz said it is customary that the charges will be filed directly in district court, on Sept. 12, on the strength of a sworn affidavit from Sanders County Attorney Bob Zimmerman outlining the probable cause for arresting and holding the defendants.

That affidavit was not available Friday. Beitz said a search warrant served Wednesday at Peacock’s home had not yet been returned, so information from the warrant was not yet public.

The state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation in Kalispell issued a press release late Friday afternoon that quoted Sanders County Deputy Chris McGuigan, who was involved with the investigation and obtained the search warrant from Beitz.

McGuigan said: “It appears the fires were set in an attempt by Peacock and Beighey to get work as firefighters after the pair were closed out of their jobs by the Level V closures that have been in place for some time in southwest Montana. ”

Both Peacock and Beighey are rock miners, and land closures prevented the men from working, according to the deputy.

Two of the fires that allegedly were intentionally set grew on Aug. 5 into the West Fork Combest Creek fire southwest of Plains It expanded to 30 to 35 acres before it was controlled by firefighters. Three other, smaller fires, also were allegedly set. Charges against the defendants alleged fires were deliberately set between Aug. 5 and Aug. 9.

The West Fork Combest Creek fire is still on patrol status, a Plains Dispatch Center official said, but is not actively manned.

DNRC Plains Office Fire Supervisor Greg Archie said in the press release:

“The fires set represent a huge risk to the safety of firefighters called to the fires as well as residents of Sanders County. The cost of suppression on these fires amounts to many thousands of dollars.”

The investigation involved cooperation between the U.S. Forest Service, DNRC and Sanders County Sheriff’ s Office. The arrests close out the investigation into five human-caused fires in the Plains area. Three other suspicious fires are still under investigation.

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Friday September 1^st rain helps, supply shortages hurt firefighting effort ,  continued

But an official at the Northern Rockies Coordination Center in Missoula said it would take significant rainfall, not just a teasing shower or two, to make a real difference on the fire lines.

“With rainy weather and cool weather, it’s easy to get lulled into thinking this beast has been tamed,” J.D. Coleman said Friday. “It has not.”

The fire battles have become so long and intense that earlier in the week, there were reports that essential supplies for firefighters were low.

Supply centers in Billings and Missoula reported inventories down dramatically, but the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said Friday that it has a well-stocked warehouse and is prepared to send supplies.

“Idaho is not Montana, but it’s next door,” said E.Lynn Burkett, spokeswoman at the Idaho center. “We have a lot of supplies available.”

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., led a delegation Thursday to the Idaho center and pressed for faster delivery of firefighting resources.

“We delivered the message to center officials that we need to get resources as quickly as possible to put fires out because Montanans’ lives are at stake and their homes and businesses are threatened,” he said after returning from Boise.

“My goal was to cut through the red tape to get the radios, communications planes and personal protective gear without jumping through hoops,” he said.

Since late July, Baucus said, wildfires have burned more than 716,000 acres in Montana. Fire costs have surpassed $150 million, Rorie Hanrahan of the Montana Disaster and Emergency Services Division said Friday. Earlier this week, President Clinton declared Montana a disaster area. Idaho’s request is pending.

The center in Boise said Montana’s current 27 large fires involve an area of 658,000 acres. Nationally, 68 fires are spread over 1.6 million acres, mostly in western states, with Montana and Idaho the hardest hit.

On Thursday, fire managers said there were no major flareups and they were hoping forecasts of cooler temperatures and rain through the weekend would materialize.

Areas receiving rain Friday included the Bitterroot Valley, hit particularly hard by fires. The National Weather Service said weekend forecasts for southwestern Montana call for cloudy conditions with scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms. Fire officials said accompanying winds could present problems.

James Chapman, manager of the Billings Interagency Fire Dispatch Center, told The Billings Gazette that a crew of Indian firefighters and some fire managers could not be sent to fire lines recently because special firefighter pants and shirts were not available.

Other shortages reported: sleeping bags, pumps, water tanks, water hose and repair parts, tents, chainsaws and hand tools, among other items.

In Washington, President Clinton said Thursday an additional $90 million was being released to ensure “that the federal firefighters have the resources they need.

“Now a total of $590 million has been spent on emergency funding to combat these fires,” he said, characterizing this as one of the worst wildfire seasons in the history of America.

Officials said used equipment was being recycled as quickly as possible.

U.S. House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt was in Great Falls for a campaign appearance Thursday and referred to the western fires as “horrible.”

“I’m from Missouri, where we had big floods in 1993 and 1995,” he said. “We asked you – the rest of the country – to help us then. The whole United States needs to pitch in now and help Montana in its time of need. We’re going to be there.”

There are more than 11,000 firefighters in Montana, including military units. On Friday, 40 who do initial attacks on significant fires were between assignments, so they began playground maintenance work at the school in Avon, a small community west of Helena. Later in the day, they planned to paint the community hall.

The crews work in fire clothes so they are ready to go to a blaze instantly, said Fred Staedler, an administrator for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

The Bureau of Land Management reported a deluge of volunteers to fight fires.

“We appreciate the support, but we’ve already got a tremendous amount of trained and qualified people ready to go,” Montana BLM Director Mat Millenbach said.

Forty-one firefighters from Saskatchewan, Canada, arrived Thursday to join 130 Canadians already on the lines. Firefighters also have come from 26 states, New Zealand, Australia and Puerto Rico.

South of Red Lodge, the Beartooth Highway used for access to Yellowstone National Park’s northeast entrance reopened on Friday, after a four-day closure. Traffic Friday was moving in guided convoys to control speeds in the fire zone.

About 140 homes remained under evacuation orders in the Bitterroot Valley, where the Valley fire cluster covers a quarter-million acres and is the nation’s largest.

Significant fire activity was reported on the Mussigbrod portion of that fire, in an area east of Sula, and officials said some buildings were threatened, but the fire’s run dwindled during the night.  

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Another signal that things were returning to normal was the reopening of the Beartooth Highway Friday morning. It had been closed since the Willie fire roared up the heavily forested slopes south of Red Lodge on Sunday.

“The news is good,” the head of the command team managing the fire told Red Lodge residents at a town meeting Friday. “We’ve had two very productive days on the Willie incident.”

Steve Frye also told the 200 people gathered in the Civic Center that “there isn’t anyplace we’d rather be right now than in Red Lodge, Mont. ... This community has demonstrated incredible character.”

The people at the meeting also demonstrated an increasingly savvy grasp of the situation, peppering Frye with detailed questions about helicopters, fire retardant, wind direction and more.

Frye paused before fielding the seventh or eighth question thrown at him.

“You folks are getting very, very sophisticated about this fire business,” he said.

And by Friday, the 395 firefighters battling the Willie fire had a much better grasp on the nature of their struggle. Frye said Friday was a “real pivotal day” because they finally had the right mix and the right numbers of personnel and equipment on hand.

The big Sikorsky Sky Crane helicopter was moved to another fire, but in return the Willie fire acquired two new helicopters that can drop water as well as ferry firefighters to the top of the mountain. That is saving the crews a tough, steep four-hour hike, Frye said, allowing them to devote more of their time and strength to building fire lines and mopping up hot spots.

Two helicopter landing spots were established, one near the peak of Wapiti Peak, near the northwestern edge of the main fire, and another on the northern edge of a smaller spot fire that was burning just northeast of the main blaze.

Fire information officer Bobby Kitchens said the rain that fell on Billings about 4 p.m. bypassed Red Lodge, but the winds picked up considerably for 10 or 15 minutes, grounding the helicopters and fueling fears that the fire might spread. But the winds died down fairly quickly and the fire hadn’t burned beyond its perimeter, Kitchens said.

Another dark cloud rolled in about 5:30 and dumped a fair amount of rain on the Willie fire, but it was unclear how much effect it would have on the fire.

Frye said firefighters have been concentrating for the past couple of days on building a strong “dozer line” on the north side of the fires to keep them from spreading toward Red Lodge and the West Fork area. They also made it a priority to get people back in their homes and to get all businesses in the area open again.

“We’ve been trying really hard to get that done, and it’s happening today,” Frye said.

Still, he advised people in the Rock Creek area not to bring their livestock back yet and to keep sprinklers going on their land and their houses. The fight is going well, he said, “but Mother Nature always bats last.”

In addition to the firefighting specialists, Frye said, the Willie fire also has the services of three “structure-protection experts” who inspected houses on the far side of Highway 212, as yet untouched by fire.

“They all feel real good about our ability to protect the homes along Highway 212 and the West Fork,” he said.

Frye had further assurances for people worried about the long-term effects of fire retardant on the environment. He said it is basically a fertilizer that will have no ill effects on the land, besides dyeing it red for a while. The mixture is too rich in nutrients to drop in water, he said, so the aerial crews have avoided dumping it in lakes and streams.

He also told residents that the fire management team is already working on plans to return all land disrupted by bulldozers and other equipment to as close to its original condition as possible.

“We’ll come back as long as we need to come back to get that right,” he said.

Ruth Brown, director of the Beartooth Nature Center in Red Lodge, a sanctuary for injured or imprinted wildlife, has been taking in pets all week from people who had been evacuated from their homes. She said she took in about 20 creatures all told, ranging from fish, frogs and birds to cats, dogs and guinea pigs.

Carbon County Sheriff Luke Schroder, speaking at the town meeting, asked people interested in the firefighting business to show a little more restraint. People have been pulling over on the road paralleling the airport runway to rubberneck at the helicopters and retardant bombers, raising safety concerns. Some people even hopped the airport fence to get a closer look at the helicopters, Schroder said.

Kitchens, the fire information officer, said very little had changed on the Willie fire as of 6 p.m. Friday. The fire was still 25 percent contained and was burning only within its perimeter.

The fire started late Sunday afternoon about six miles south of Red Lodge, the result of a motorcycle accident. The Beartooth Highway, which had been closed since shortly after the fire raced uphill from the road, reopened Friday at 9 a.m.

To keep people from stopping near the fire, pilot cars were leading people from a roadblock near the Rock Creek Resort to the gate that is closed when snow or other conditions make the road impassable. Starting today, the pilot cars will be leading all motorists between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. At all other times, people can drive without the pilot cars, but stopping in the vicinity of the fire is still prohibited.

Meanwhile, back at the town meeting, Frye had nothing but praise for the people of Red Lodge. He said firefighting crews hop all over the country, but from good locations they take memories of relationships established.

“We will walk away from this assignment with very strong, very enduring memories of those relationships,” he said.  

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Willie fire 60% contained, continued
“We don’t have fire lines completely around it, but hopefully we will within the next few days," Brown said.

Red Lodge got less than a 10th of an inch of rain Friday, but humidity has remained high there. Wind gusts from thunderstorms reached 30 to 35 miles an hour Friday afternoon, and there were some lightning strikes on the West Fork side of the fire, Brown said, but the rain and high humidity kept any new fires from breaking out.

The biggest problem now, Brown said, is that the rain created slippery conditions for firefighters. Brown said crews were told Saturday morning to walk methodically along to avoid slipping on the rocks or mud.

Ten 20-person hand crews and five helicopters were working toward containment Saturday by building fire lines and watering down hot spots. Brown said that as containment nears, the number of hand crews has increased and would continue to do so as they complete mop-ups of hot spots inside the fire line. Total number of personnel on the Willie fire is 409.

Bulldozers began work Friday on drainage protection and other rehabilitation efforts. Firefighters are also reseeding those areas disturbed with firefighting activity with native plant seeds. Most of the burned area is populated with lodgepole pines, a species that actually requires fire to release the seeds from pinecones

U.S Highway 212 between Red Lodge and Cooke City opened to through traffic on Friday. Pilot cars lead traffic through the Willie fire area from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. daily. Traffic delays of up to 30 minutes should be expected during piloted times. Through traffic may use the highway after 8 p.m. without pilot cars. Motorists are not allowed to stop in the fire vicinity.

The lower portion of the West Fork of Rock Creek Road is open to the Custer National Forest boundary. Access above that point is limited to private land owners. All other lands on the Custer National Forest remain closed to the public under Level V fire restrictions.

Cost to date of the Willie fire is $1,239,476. No injuries have been reported.

In Eastern Montana two fires were burning on state lands in Eastern Montana Saturday night, a 2,500-acre fire about 25 miles southwest of Plevna and a 300-acre fire about 30 miles north of Ashland.

The Miles City Creek fire, as the larger blaze has been named, was 25 percent contained as of about 8 p.m., according to Don Barry of the Interagency Dispatch Center in Billings. Barry said the fire apparently was started by lightning during the storm that swept through Billings and Eastern Montana Friday night and Saturday morning.

The fire, which was burning in grasslands and some timber, was being fought by 48 people, assisted by 18 fire engines and a helicopter. Barry said the crews were concentrating on building a fire line around the blaze, adding that high winds predicted for Saturday night could make the effort more difficult.

On the 300-acre Wild Horse fire north of Ashland, four residences and six out-buildings had been threatened, but tanker planes dropping retardant saved several structures and none of them had been damaged as of about 9 p.m. Saturday, said Jean Claybo of the Billings dispatch center.

Eighty-five firefighters were battling the Wild Horse fire, Claybo said, and it was also thought to have been sparked by lightning. Aiding the effort were four single-engine air tankers and a helicopter.

Eastern Montana rangeland has been dried out so thoroughly by prolonged drought that the rains accompanying the lightning Friday and Saturday did little to lessen the extreme fire danger, Claybo said.

Claybo said several smaller fires were reported in Rosebud County, but they were being fought by local crews and no requests for help were received by the dispatch center.

Meanwhile, firefighters at other fires in the state were confident that cooler, humid weather might finally help them gain ground on Montana’s wildfires.

“These are probably the best conditions we’ve had since this fire started,” said Dan Kincaid, a fire information officer for the 81,000-acre Maudlow-Toston fire near the small town of Townsend. “I think it will allow (firefighters) to make pretty good progress this weekend.”

“Reports are positive across the state,” added Rorie Hanrahan, spokeswoman for the state Division of Disaster and Emergency Services. “Percentages of fire containment are up.”

And for the first time since the blazes began six weeks ago, fire officials have set up a “demobilizing center” in Missoula in preparation for sending firefighters home permanently. But Hanrahan said there were no immediate plans to begin that process.

Fire officials were again tempering their optimism Saturday, observing that many of the 27 active blazes that have scorched more than 658,200 acres in the state still are not contained, while others have the potential to overtake fire lines, especially if weather conditions revert.

Weekend forecasts called for highs only in the 70s, with moderate humidity and a chance of showers and thunderstorms through Wednesday.

The Maudlow-Toston fire was considered about 65 percent contained Saturday, but Hanrahan said crews were optimistic that would rise to 80 percent by Sunday morning.

Hanrahan said the same storms that brought relief in the form of rain also brought lightning. At least five new, small fires were reported in Eastern Montana, and at least one on the Flathead Indian Reservation in northwestern Montana. Officials said one lightning-caused blaze was spotted in the Centennial Mountains east of Lima, in extreme southwestern Montana, but was doused by rain before firefighters reached it.

Meanwhile, nine fires were burning about 46,000 acres scattered over an area about 150 miles long from just south of Yellowstone National Park to the Commissary Range of the Bridger-Teton National Forest east of Cokeville. Four others were still active in remote backcountry of Yellowstone, including one that started Aug. 13.

Just south of Yellowstone, crews had reached 85 percent containment of a 2,464-acre fire in the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway. Containment of other fires outside the park ranged from 0 percent to 70 percent.

In and near Wyoming’s two national parks, most wilderness and backcountry areas have been reopened, but “we’re advising people not to go into burned areas on foot or horseback,” Fire Information Officer Larry Blade said.

“The fires have weakened the tree roots so the trees can fall without warning, and where roots have burned completely underground, all of a sudden you could be stepping down into a hole.”

The damp weather and a prediction of additional moisture in Yellowstone National Park prompted officials to lift some restrictions Saturday. Wood and charcoal fires are again being allowed at developed campsites, picnic and parking areas and employee housing but are limited to established fire pits or grates or as long as fire pans or barbecues are used.

Smoking restrictions have also been lifted in developed areas, all of which remained open. All entrances and roads within and leading to the park were open.

Grassy Lake Road, just south of Yellowstone’s southern boundary, reopened Friday afternoon. No-stopping restrictions on the South Entrance Road were also lifted.

Last week, park staff established plots to monitor how the 1988 fires, largest and most destructive in park history, were affecting the behavior of a fire near Grassy Lake. The fire was burning in an area scorched in 1988.

Thirty-four fires have started in Yellowstone this summer, but most have been small and in remote areas.  

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Tuesday morning western wildfire update. continued

Eastern Montana
WILLIE, 1,500 acres, 90 percent contained, five miles southwest of Red Lodge.
This fire is five miles southwest of Red Lodge. Highway 212 is open to
traffic. Crews are progressing on mopup, patrol and rehabilitation efforts.
SPRUCE COMPLEX, 6,425 acres, 0 percent contained. This is a complex of 11
fires in Yellowstone National Park. The complex consists of the Plateau,
Moose, Unlucky, Boundary and several smaller fires. The Unlucky, Moose and
Plateau fires are staffed with monitors to observe fire activity.
Bitterroot Valley
VALLEY COMPLEX, 181,700 acres, 45 percent contained. These fires are seven
miles south of Darby. The complex consists of the Bear, Taylor, Taylor Spot,
Hilltop, Razor, Fat and Mink fires. The complex consists of the Bear, Taylor,
Taylor Spot, Hilltop, Razor, Fat and Mink fires. Fire behavior observed today
included smoldering, creeping and occasional torching.
SKALKAHO COMPLEX, 64,389 acres, 50 percent contained. This group of fires is
ten miles southeast of Hamilton. Included in the complex are the Bear and
Coyote fire. The fire activity has been reduced due to favorable weather
conditions.
BLODGETT TRAILHEAD, 11,486 acres, 52 percent contained. This fire is three
miles northwest of Hamilton. Fire activity remained light. Cloudy, cool
weather persisted throughout the day.
WILDERNESS COMPLEX, 63,307 acres, 45 percent contained. The complex consists of 15 fires in the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church River of No Return
Wildernesses, 40 miles southwest of Hamilton. Large fires in the complex
include the Hamilton, Lonely, Fitz, Thirty, Echo and Throng fires. Fire
activity below 4,500 feet was more active than at the higher elevations.
CROOKED, 4,892 acres, 90 percent contained. The fire is 50 miles southwest of
Missoula, near Lolo Pass. Minimal fire activity was observed. Mopup
activities continue.
MUSSIGBROD COMPLEX, 84,939 acres, 45 percent contained. These fires are 12 miles northwest of Wisdom. The complex includes the Mussigbrod and Maynard fires. Fire activity was minimal. Construction of direct fire line continues on all divisions.
Missoula-area
ALDER CREEK, 5,500 acres, 0 percent contained. This fire is 31 miles
southeast of Missoula. Crews were successful with direct attack with
assistance from helicopter bucket drops.
THOMPSON FLAT COMPLEX, 14,936 acres, 80 percent contained. This is a complex of six fires in the vicinity of Superior. Work progressed on the Landowner fire with direct fireline construction despite the rough terrain. Road repair on the Flat fire is continuing.
UPPER NINEMILE COMPLEX, 24,345 acres, 60 percent contained. These fires are burning 25 miles northwest of Missoula. Mopup and rehabilitation activities
are continuing.
CLEAR CREEK DIVIDE COMPLEX, 20,302 acres, 80 percent contained. This complex, 60 miles northwest of Missoula, consists of the Clear Creek, Vanderburg, Siegel, Seepay and Magpie Creek fires. Direct attack, maintenance of existing firelines and mopup continues on all fires in the complex.
MONTURE/SPREAD RIDGE, 27,500 acres, 10 percent contained. The fires are 15 miles east of Seeley Lake. Crews continue with suppression and rehabilitation efforts.
MIDDLE FORK COMPLEX, 24,040 acres, 30 percent contained. The complex consists of the Falls Creek, Cougar Creek, Coyote Springs, Medicine Lake, Skalkaho Pass, Lick Creek and Cooper Creek fires, 30 miles southwest of Philipsburg.  Fire behavior includes smoldering and creeping in the heavy fuels.
Central Montana
MAUDLOW/TOSTON, 81,000 acres, 65 percent contained. These fires are 25 miles northeast of Belgrade. Fire behavior is of low intensity.
SUGARLOAF, 374 acres, 50 percent contained. The fire is 13 miles northeast of
Wilsall. Low fire activity was observed. Fire is being monitored by aerial
reconnaissance.
JUDITH COMPLEX, 1,460 acres, 50 percent contained. This complex consists of
the Studhorse, Lost Fork and High Springs fires, which are 25 miles southwest
of Stanford. No significant activity observed.
Northwest Montana
STONE YOUNG, 25,330 acres, 100 percent contained. The complex is 65 miles
northeast of Libby. Unless the fire jumps the line, it will be dropped from
the next update.
KOOTENAI COMPLEX, 14,404 acres, 75 percent contained. These fires are 20
miles northwest of Libby. Fire activity remains quiet. Mopup and patrol
continues on established containment lines.
TROY SOUTH, 3,849 acres, 71 percent contained. This complex of fires is near
Troy.  Intermittent rain showers reduced fire activity.
CHIPMUNK, 3,078 acres, 20 percent contained. The fire is burning in spruce,
subalpine fir and brush 45 miles southeast of Kalispell. Moderate fire
activity was observed. Road closures remain in effect.
GREEN MOUNTAIN, 866 acres, 95 percent contained. These fires are seven miles northwest of Trout Creek. The complex includes the Green Mountain, McNeeley, Basin Creek and Engle fires. Fire activity is minimal.
SHARON, 450 acres, 0 percent contained. This fire is near North Fork in
Glacier National Park. Fire activity has been low. The National Park Service
is monitoring the fire with daily aerial observation flights. Low fire
activity was observed.
HELEN CREEK, 6,100 acres, 0 percent contained. This fire is 22 miles south of
Spotted Bear. The fire is being monitored by U.S. Forest Service personnel.
Due to favorable weather fire activity has been minimal.
MINARET PEAK, 619 acres, 0 percent contained. The fire is near the Spotted
Bear Ranger Station in the Bob Marshall Wilderness. U.S. Forest Service
personnel are monitoring the fire's activity. Fire activity decreased due to
weather.
PARKE PEAK, 2,100 acres, 75 percent contained. The fire has been burning
since July 23 in the northwest corner of Glacier National Park. Fire activity
remained low with no increase in perimeter growth.
CRIMSON PEAK, 410 acres, 0 percent contained. This fire is located in the Bob
Marshall Wilderness. The fire is being monitored by U.S. Forest Service
personnel. Fire activity decreased due to change in the weather.
ELK MOUNTAIN, 1,100 acres, 100 percent contained. This fire is 30 miles east
of Libby. Unless the fire jumps the line, it will be dropped from the update.

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Willie fire contained; top crews move on

“We’re going to drop down to two hand-crews tomorrow from eight today, and there will probably be two helicopters for a day or two, then they’ll all be gone,” said Bobby Kitchens on Tuesday. Kitchens is a fire information officer for the U.S. Forest Service’s Type I team. The Type I team is the crack national fire-fighting crew brought in to fight the fire, which started Aug. 27 during a Willie Nelson concert in Red Lodge.

On Sept. 2 at the peak of the effort, 499 people were battling Willie’s flames, Kitchens said. That crew dwindled to 323 people Monday night. With two hand-crews on duty, about 45 people will be on the fire lines and handling support tasks. Kitchens said this wildfire was put out the old-fashioned way. “We pounded it out,” he said. “We used the correct tactics and resources and we put this one out. We didn’t lose a bit of line, once it was put in.” Kitchens said he’ll rest when some moisture comes. “I’ll feel confident when we get some rain on it. I think we have it pretty well contained. I just don’t want to have a big wind event,” he said.

He said four firefighters were injured in their feet or legs working in rough terrain. The condition of the 23-year-old motorcycle rider whose crash started the fire has improved. Eric Robinson was upgraded to satisfactory condition at the intensive care unit at St. Vincent Hospital and Health Center in Billings.

The Montana Highway Patrol officer investigating the accident could not be reached to determine whether Robinson will be ticketed and the Forest Service continues to investigate the cause of the fire, according to Jeff Gildehaus of the Red Lodge Ranger Station. He said no decision has been made about trying to collect some of the costs of the fire from Robinson.

Forest Service law enforcement officer Mike Watkins is interested in finding a videotape that reportedly chronicles the start of the fire. “One of the law enforcement officers taking care of the accident told me there was a gentleman with a video camera there, but I don’t even know if the person was from in state or out-of-state,” said Watkins said. “If it shows the very beginning of the fire, I’d like to see it.” Watkins urged people to call at him (406) 446-2103, if they have information about the video.

Changes may come for Red Lodge

Carbon County Sheriff Luke Schroeder said some changes may be coming for area residents living close to the forest. “Everybody’s talking about the fire. I guess it put a very realistic twist on it that everybody living around here could have lost everything they had,” Schroeder said. Schroeder said rural fire department officials may meet with people to show them how to better protect their property, including building fire breaks in some vulnerable areas. He said that he’s just glad no homes or businesses burned and that the fire is contained. “Now we can return to normal, whatever that is,” he said. “We’re stretched thin as it is with manpower and when you have a major incident, that strains us even more trying to put bodies where they need to be.”

The bill for the blaze

The total cost of the Willie fire is pegged at $2.5 million and climbing.

Aircraft costs are the top expense at nearly $1.2 million or 43 percent.

Equipment to fight the fire cost $430,051 or 15 percent.

The crews who actually fight the fire cost $402,038 or 14 percent.

Support costs or supplies made up another 14 percent of the bill or $408,230.

Personnel costs include the overhead managers and camp crews. These expenses were $307,953 or 11 percent of the bill.  Air tankers dropped a total of 164,911 gallons of fire retardant. Helicopters dropped another 15,000 gallons of retardant and 170,000 gallons of water on Willie.

Forest reopened, with restrictions

As of noon Tuesday, the Level V fire closure order banning public use of the Custer National Forest was lifted. The forest lands are reopened under Level IV rules, which mean no open fires including stoves, lanterns unless they are inside a home or recreational vehicle.

No gasoline-powered equipment, welding or blasting is allowed. Smoking is restricted to inside cars or buildings. Smokers may light up outside only if the area is cleared of vegetation for three-feet in diameter.

Meanwhile, town residents got up early Tuesday to throw a 7:30 a.m. parade honoring the firefighters.  “People lined the street to say, ‘Thanks, firefighters.’ They waved and cheered. We drove through town on our equipment and out to the fire line,” Kitchens said. “It’s been a wonderful experience in that the community of Red Lodge has been so supportive.”  

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Firefighters begin returning home, continued

By Wednesday, 1,328 firefighters have gone through a fire camp in Missoula either to wait for reassignment or head home. At least 15 crews returned to their homes in the southeastern and southwestern United States Tuesday, and more were expected to head to fire lines across the country by the end of the week.

“The pendulum has now swung the other way,” said Bill Cowin, incident commander for a fire camp that has been set up in Missoula to handle demobilization. Mike Stearns, a firefighter from Roscommon, Mich., joined nearly 500 other firefighters waiting for word on their next stop.

“We were hoping for another assignment,” he said. “We have 14-day assignments on these Western fires, and our assignment won’t be up until next Monday. But it look like we’re going to be demobed because there’s no fire activity right now. The rains really helped.”

Stearns and his two three-member engine crews were pulled from the Ninemile fires near Missoula after rains slowed the fires’ progress. They had already completed tours on the Twin Creek fire in Idaho and fires in Montana’s southern Bitterroot Valley earlier this summer.

The fires are not out. As of Wednesday, 86 large fires were burning on 1.6 million acres in Arkansas, California, Idaho, Mississippi, Nevada, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico, Wyoming and Texas, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Nationwide, fires have burned more than 6.6 million acres this year. But cooler temperatures and rain – snow in some mountainous regions – have quelled the worst of the blazes. Fires that roared through forest a week ago now are burning down or creeping.

Nearly 10,000 firefighters are in Montana battling the state’s 24 largest fires on 645,289 acres, while 19 fires were burning 696,866 acres in Idaho. The Interagency Fire Center planned to stop reporting on several fires unless significant activity occurred. “They probably have containment lines all around them, significant hot spots have been dealt with,” said the center’s E. Lynn Burkett. “There’s no threat to human life, to structures. They’re in the recuperation stage.”

Montana officials opened up millions of acres of public lands to hikers and outdoor enthusiasts Tuesday. Favorable weather also enabled Idaho to reopen more than 2 million acres, including most of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness and the Salmon River’s mainstem and Middle Fork.

“The extreme seriousness of the situation has changed to where we can now feel comfortable to allow access to the wilderness,” said George Matejko, lead forest supervisor for the wilderness. “Over the past few days, the forests have received enough rain and lower temperatures to reduce the erratic fire behavior and related threat to public safety.” Most closures in the Nez Perce and Clearwater National Forests were lifted, as were a number of fire restrictions.

Public land remained closed in parts of Montana’s Bitterroot National Forest, where hundreds of homes were evacuated during the summer and 64 of them were destroyed. “It’s just important people realize that there are areas still closed in our forests,” said Cass Cairns, public affairs officer for the Forest Service. “We still have active fire out there, and in terms of public safety, it’s important that we keep some of those areas closed.”

The remaining evacuations in the Bitterroot Valley were lifted Tuesday evening. Hundreds of homes there were evacuated during the summer, and 64 were destroyed. Officials have not yet determined when the four large fire complexes in the Bitterroot Valley will be fully contained, but Cowin said replacement crews probably wouldn’t come from outside the region.

Favorable weather, including cooler temperatures and rain, enabled firefighters near Red Lodge to declare the 1,500-acre Willie fire contained Tuesday evening. Two 20-person hand crews and two helicopters remained to mop up hot spots and begin rehabilitation in the area.  

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Wildfires subsiding, but normal life remains elusive for some Montanans

Foresters have told Zikan it will be a year and a half before she’ll know whether the hillside behind the rubble of her home is stable, or prone to slide because of fire damage. She wants to build a house where the old one stood, but there will be no construction if the hillside is likely to shift.

Montana’s wildfires continue to burn, but less fiercely, and firefighters have begun moving out. But for Zikan, whose house was destroyed Aug. 6, and hundreds of others whose lives were thrown into disarray by the infernos, there is no shipping out, and no immediate forecast of a normal life.

“It’s a waiting game,” Zikan said this week as she picked through the remains of her Bitterroot Valley house and belongings – charred bed frames, pieces of pottery and everywhere, nails that held the house together for more than a century. She is 62 and lived on this small parcel of land for 25 years. Now, she is staying with friends. The American Red Cross says the human recovery from Montana’s fire catastrophe will be different from recovery after other natural disasters, because people are having to keep their lives on hold longer.

“A tornado comes and a tornado goes,” said Bob Howard, Red Cross spokesman in Missoula. “People know the extent of the damage and what they have to deal with.” But there are unknowns in the aftermath of the Montana wildfires, which began in July and had blackened 935,700 acres as of Friday. Hit hardest was southwestern Montana’s Bitterroot area, which has about one-third of the burned land and has lost 64 homes.

For Zikan and others with property where fires ripped through trees and other protective cover on slopes, there is the possible instability of the land. For people with respiratory problems, the health effects from prolonged exposure to smoke will not be known for months. And although Montana’s wildfires are subsiding, several weeks remain in the fire season and there is a risk new blazes will erupt or the ongoing fires will flare up. “It’s been hard on a lot of people, physically and emotionally,” said Gretchen Serwacki, evacuated for a full month from her home in the southern Bitteroot Valley.

Serwacki is among the people allowed to return home when the last of the Bitterroot evacuation orders ended on Tuesday, opening access to about 100 houses. But the return by her and her husband was delayed when they learned their place had septic-tank problems, apparently caused by the removal of trees.

“We think we’re blessed that we still have our house,” said Serwacki, who has been living in a motorhome at a campground south of Darby. Foresters, soil scientists, fire experts and others are assessing the intensity of the fires from one place to another. Measures to rehabilitate the land will vary with severity of the burning, said Jack Kendley, a Forest Service spokesman.

The study of the fires’ intensity will provide information for managers of public lands and for private landowners, such as Zikan. She has a lot of questions. “The forester says these little poplar trees will make it,” she said. “Tell me why those will make it and the others won’t.”

Many of her pine and fruit trees died in the fire. Some small, blackened apples still hang on branches and others are scattered about the ground, like charcoal briquettes dumped from a barbecue. Zikan figures she will plant huckleberries when the time is right.

The backyard fruit is replaceable, but so many of the things that went up in smoke are not: Zikan’s baby book, her late father’s billfold. “I don’t think I have any record of my mother’s handwriting,” she said. “You don’t think about things like that.”

After being told the house was at risk, she removed two carloads of belongings, including some photographs. But she never really expected fire to consume her home south of Darby. When it happened, Zikan was at a wedding. She had left the house believing that when she returned, it would be there and the things she had taken out would be put back in their places.

“What fireplace is not left standing?” she said Wednesday as she paused amid the rubble. Only the brick fireplace that had been in her living room rose above the debris. The house was a place with a cozy interior characterized by log beams and cedar walls, and not long ago, Zikan’s children gave her a kitchen remodeling.

“Everything’s gone,” she said. But she is looking to the future. “Two years from now, this will be nice and green.”  

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Living on disaster's doorstep, continued

Lindstrom’s paper, freshly inked with his signature and those of his fellow county commissioners, is a new list of rules, restricting housing development in the forested fringe of Colorado’s front range.  It is aimed at reducing homeowner losses to wildfire and removing homes as a fuel for those fires.

Five years ago, the commissioners signed another piece of paper, forcing anyone building a home tight against the wilderness to install sprinklers, cut back trees and keep enough water on hand to douse an out-of-control blaze.

At the time, it was one of the West’s first attempts to keep people out of harm’s way through zoning and building regulations.

“It caused a huge uproar in this community,” Lindstrom said. “Some people said, ‘By God, I have a right to build my house wherever I choose, and I don’t have to follow your rules.’” “They said it would increase land prices,” he said. “ But we had to do something. It’s not fair to allow a few landowners to saddle everyone else with the costs of protecting and replacing those homes. “The fact is, the people who can afford a mountainside home can afford a sprinkler system.”

Summit County’s new rules about how, where and what people can build do put a dent in personal-property rights, Lindstrom admits.

Throughout the nation, communities are grappling with the conflict between property rights and how best to minimize the damage from natural disasters. The debate is intensifying as Americans increasingly build in locations prone to being in harm’s way. In Summit County, Lindstrom said, “it started with a house on every hillside and a subdivision up every drainage.”

“ No one wanted any building regulations, but everyone wanted fire protection,” he said. “Now, we have people building 30,000-square-foot houses in wilderness inholdings and flying in supplies with helicopters. That’ s stupid .... You can’t say it’s illegal to be stupid. You can’t say a person must have a certain IQ level before they can get a building permit, but I sure wish you could.”

What you can do is outlaw cedar-shake roofs. You can order people to keep a clear zone around their homes. You can prohibit them building on a particular forest parcel. “In today’s world,” he said, “you can’t afford not to lay down a few rules. There are too many people affected if you don’t have any rules.”

Breaking cycle of disaster

As far back as the 1930s, America looked to zoning rules and building regulations to reduce the dangers of urban fire gobbling up city blocks. It was a trade-off – fewer personal rights for greater community safety.

More recently, zoning has been used to keep people out of harm’s way across the nation. Building regulations have kept the costs of hurricane damage down and have reduced the destructive toll of earthquakes, tornadoes, ice storms and hurricanes.

During the 1980s, Tulsa, Okla. – with 15 percent of its land area in the flood plain – became known as the “flood capital of the U.S.” Tulsa had more federal disaster declarations than anywhere else in the nation. The city of 745,000 is built on a bend of the Arkansas River, which jumps its banks with depressing regularity.

“It was ridiculous,” said Ann Patton, who directs Tulsa’s “Project Impact,” designed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help communities become more resistant to disaster.

“People just kept rebuilding and getting flooded, rebuilding and getting flooded, over and over and over.” Tulsa was trapped in the same cycle of flood-and-rebuild that was all too familiar from coast to coast. The time had come, Patton said, for America – and Tulsa in particular – to break the cycle.

The first step was regulatory. The city implemented building codes and zoning to keep new construction out of the flood plain, much as Lindstrom’s new rules keep people out of Colorado’ s forests. The second step was investment in infrastructure – dams and dikes, catch basins and channels, all to route the floodwaters safely around Tulsa.

The third step, Patton said, was to move houses, one by one, out of the flood plain. Those that weren’t moved were purchased and demolished, she said. Today the river corridor is a complex of trails and parks. Tulsa used FEMA money to move the homes, as well as funds from a citywide sales tax, a few bond issues and small grants from the Army Corps of Engineers, Patton said.

“Before you tamper with a man’s right to do what he wants to with his land, you better make sure it’s necessary,” she said. “In this town, it was necessary.” But it took awhile before everyone recognized the need.

Businesses, she said, don ’t want to move to the disaster capital of America, and tourists don’t travel to stand knee-deep in the Arkansas River. The entire community was affected by the floods, she said.

That universal effect made the city’ s sales tax possible, she said, and paved the way for stringent land-use regulations. Understanding that all were affected also made it easier to watch caravans of homes being trucked to higher ground.

Holding winds at bay

In addition to its reputation for flooding, Tulsa is known for sitting in the middle of Tornado Alley. On May 9, 1999 – just six years after FEMA moved more than 25,000 homes away from the flooding Mississippi – a series of violent storms ripped through the Midwest, leveling trophy homes and trailer parks alike.

They were the costliest tornadoes in America’s history, leaving a $1.5-billion swath of kindling in their wake. In Oklahoma, 44 people died. Using her background in flood mitigation, Patton began drumming up support for a program that would keep folks out of the way of the wind. Today, contractors are hard at work on Legacy Park, a bomb-proof Tulsa subdivision in which homes are built around a central “safe room.”

The anchored and armored safe rooms, Patton said, are bulked up to withstand tornado winds: A 2-by-4 flying at 100 mph won’t penetrate the shell. “It’s amazing to discover that there are things you can do to be safer, ” she said. “Sure, Mother Nature is going to have the upper hand when push comes to shove, but at least you had a hand to play.”

Playing that hand, however, is easier with fire and flood than with other natural phenomenon because at least you know the parameters of the game. With a tornado, she said, you never know where or when it might touch down – there is no equivalent to the flood plain or wildland interface between homes and forest.

“That’s the problem with hurricanes, too,” said Jim Loftus, of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management. “You can’t move people out of the way or zone certain places off-limits. Hurricanes wipe out huge areas.” If agencies tried to move people on Florida’s Atlantic Coast out of harm’s way, he said, they would have to move them at least 60 miles to the west. But that 60 miles west puts them on the Gulf of Mexico, right back in harm’s way.

Even if you could move them to safety, those living on the ocean probably wouldn’t budge. About 80 percent of Florida’s 15 million people are drawn by sunshine, sandy beaches and surging surf to live on the coast.

That’s why local governments have passed building regulations, hoping to shore up buildings to withstand the blow. Beach homes must be elevated, he said, and windows and doors must meet tough standards. Safe rooms like those in Patton’s neighborhood are catching on. “We can’t do anything about the weather,” Loftus said. “But we can do something about the way we build.” People on America’s West Coast also are working to make their dwellings more disaster-proof by nailing together costly shake-proof homes on fault line after fault line. “The entire state of California is criss-crossed with fault lines,” said Jaime Arteaga, a spokesman for the state’s Office of Emergency Services. “If you wanted to keep people away from an earthquake, everyone would have to move out.”

And, while Californians build with the big shake in mind, they also build with the recent memory of scorching wildfires, not unlike those that raced through the Rocky Mountain states this summer. “We aren’t going to tell people where they can or can’t build,” Brett Petroff said. “But we’re going to have something to say about how they build in extreme fire areas.” Petroff is assistant fire marshal for Orange County in southern California. More than a quarter-century ago, he said, his department and others began working with building inspectors to require that residents keep the trees and brush trimmed back in a 170-foot radius around their homes.

In 1996, with locals coming off a red-hot fire season, the Orange County government passed ordinances allowing officials a regulatory hand in home building. A state law passed that same year gave local governments the authority to map out areas of high fire danger, establishing special requirements for those areas.

Depending on the local circumstances, Petroff can require that homeowners put on a fire-resistant roof, install a sprinkler system, set in double-paned windows or build a wider street. They are similar to the rules on Lindstrom’s paper and nearly identical to regulations passed in the forests of Blaine County, Idaho.

Building with fire in mind

In Blaine County, Idaho, residents are aware of their forested surroundings and the potential fire hazards of those surroundings, and they aim to build accordingly. Debra Vignes, the county’s zoning administrator, said, “You don’t see wooden shake shingles on the roofs around here.” They are discouraged by the same Blaine County ordinance that requires rural homeowners to put in larger roads, sprinklers, dry hydrants and water cisterns. In Blaine County, she said, the first people to see proposed building plans are the folks at the fire district.

“This county has lived with some sort of fire regulation for 30 years,” she said. “So it’s not that new of a concept.” Most of those moving into the vacation valley, home to Sun Valley ski resort, are from more urban areas where zoning and building regulations are a part of everyday life, she said. Blaine County newcomer Mats Wilander couldn’t imagine a world without building codes. “I think it’s great,” he said. “I think it’ s worth any money a home builder might spend if it saves your home from burning.” Wilander says he doesn’t necessarily like the lightning rods and sprinkler heads that poke out of ceilings and roofs at his new home, but he understands the rules requiring the safety devices.

“That’s why we pay taxes,” he said. “So the government can actually do something and not have houses burning down. Besides, to not have any rules is absolutely crazy. It would just put firemen at risk, endangering their lives to save a house where the owner didn’t even do anything to save it before the fire.”

“We’re not oblivious to property rights,” said Blaine County Commissioner Dennis Wright. “But we understand one thing – your property rights have to be looked at in consideration of the greater community. When your private property right conflicts with the community’ s needs and safety, something has to give.

“Your right to have a certain kind of roof, if it might contribute to a catastrophe, is outweighed by your neighbor’s right not to be burned out by a fire you helped fuel.”

Still, he said, his county might never have passed such tough standards had a wildfire not swept to the edge of the town of Hailey seven years ago. “That really opened people’s eyes,” Wright said. “It came racing in, hit the lawns at the edge of town, found it had no fuel in the short grass and petered out. “It was a learning process because it was thrust right into your face and you had to learn. It didn’t give you a choice.”

The commissioners banned homes on steep slopes where fires spread fastest. They banned homes without adequate on-site fire protection and have required cisterns that hold 10,000 gallons of water or more. They banned homes without sprinklers and cedar-shake shingles in many places.

Racicot: It’s time to talk

Not everyone is comfortable with the government handing down personal responsibility requirements.

In Montana, where fires burned hottest this summer and the woods were declared a federal disaster area, some counties don’t even have a building inspector’s department, let alone building requirements. Uninsured homeowners who lost the ranch to wildfire will be reimbursed through taxpayer coffers, the funds channeled through FEMA and other agencies.

Nevertheless, the Montana Gov. Marc Racicot has watched tens of thousands of acres go up in smoke this summer and is ready to begin talking about making some rules. “I think that the time has come for us to look at the potential options,” he said.

Those options include everything from zoning to building standards to on-site fire-protection requirements. “There ’s no question but that it’s an imposition on private property rights,” he said. “I do this reluctantly, but it is time to bring this to the table.”

Fire chiefs, he said, might have to be brought in to discussions of planning, zoning and subdivisions. Certain parts of national forests might need to be set aside through zoning for certain activities, including recreation, timber harvest and home building. And the zoning could also ban certain activities from other areas. Private land might have to be zoned with fire danger taken into consideration.

Racicot said protecting isolated structures cannot take precedence over fighting large wildland fires, as was the case at homestead after homestead during the 2000 fire season. “I don’t know exactly what it’s going to look like in the final analysis,” he said. “But we’re not the first state to try to come up with some sort of plan. I do believe there are models available from other states.” Models like the one signed by Gary Lindstrom.

“We’re ready to burn,” Lindstrom said from his Colorado office. “We’re ripe with trees and fuels. You’re going to read about us in the paper one of these years. “We didn’t write these regulations because we wanted to,” he added. “We did it because we couldn’t afford not to.”  

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Women under fire: 'Fighting fires can be a very rewarding experience'

Betty Kuropat, supervisor of business management for the Flathead National Forest Service, said when there is a fire everybody works it. And this was true to form as women from all walks of life joined the men in mopping, fire line building and supervising crews.

For centuries, women have worked on fires along with the men. Names of the hundreds of thousands of women who have served their communities on fire watches, bucket brigades and volunteer fire companies from deep in the past until the 1970s will never be known except for a few well-remembered souls. One of the first women ever to be documented as a fire fighter was an African-American slave named Molly Williams.

According to "Women in Firefighting: A History," Williams made a distinguished presence in her calico dress and checked apron, and was said to be "as good a fire laddie as many of the boys." Her work was noted particularly during the blizzard of 1818 in New York City. Male firefighters were scarce, but Molly took her place with the men on the drag ropes and pulled the pumper to the fire through the deep snow. Several women throughout the next decades and the 1900's organized volunteer fire departments in their towns and cities.

In 1942, the Forest Fire Fighters Service (FFFS) was formed which brought together the resources of a number of state an federal agencies to recruit and train residents in forested areas to serve as lookouts, firefighters and in support positions with established fire protection agencies throughout the country. One account of the eagerness of women to volunteer for FFFS duty told of a woman, the mother of a soldier, who visited a western forest ranger and told him she wanted to fight fires. "And right up on the fire line, mind you... I can swing an ax with most men, and if those Russian women can shoulder rifles and march with their men. I guess I can eat smoke here in this forest where I've lived all my life."

The first women in the postwar period known to have been paid for fire suppression work were wildland firefighting crews working for the United States Forest Service (USFS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). One woman signed onto a emergency wildland fire crew working on BLM land in Alaska in 1971. She completed her forms, worked for one day and was fired because the crews "didn't want women in the way." After gaining sympathetic media coverage and with the help of a lawyer she was reinstated, but only if she could recruit at least 12 other women to work with her. She recruited 24. This all-woman crew worked through the summer of 1971 and the following year it was determined that crews in the future would be mixed, male and female.

Another all-women wildland fire crew worked in Montana in 1971. A young VISTA volunteer, Barbara Konigsburg, was working for a Missoula agency that helped the USFS recruit seasonal firefighters and became interested in becoming a firefighter herself. Along with several other women, she applied and was rejected, but eventually succeeded in being hired and receiving the necessary training. The team functioned as an all-female crew for two years before going co-ed. (www.wfsi.org/history.html)

Today's wildland firefighting women have come a long way and feel no discrimination from male counterparts. They all work together as teams and without complaint from either gender.  Lisa Stamie, a young woman in her 20s and member of the Type I "Hot Shot" firefighters, says she's just one of the guys.

"I don't do anything fancy, just a lot of grunt work," says Stamie, I build fire lines." The Hot Shots are the equivalent of the Green Berets in the Army. These firefighters go to fire camp and must work out and stay fit. They carry their own equipment and go deep into the forest which requires them to carry their own food in the form of military MREs (Meals-Ready-To-Eat).

"This military packaged food isn't as bad as it used to be," says Stamie. "When there's a big fire, we don't have time to care about it." "Everything requires a team effort," says Michelle Shumaker another member of the Hot Shot crew. "We get into the thick of the flames so we have to carry our own stuff. We support the engines and helicopters, we do what has to be done, nothing special."

Alley Cassup, another member of the Hot Shot team grew up in the East Coast, but got interested in fire fighting during college. "I'd never heard of wildland firefighting in the East Coast," said Cassup. "But I started working for the forest service during the summer after school then I started fighting fires, it's good seasonal work."

All women firefighters agreed it's equal pay for good exciting work and when there is a fire it doesn't matter who you are or what gender you are, everybody works it. Kuropat says it wasn't the same in the 1970s when the U.S. Forest Service started recruiting women for wildland forest fires.

"It was difficult at first, it always is when women step into nontraditional roles to compete with the men," says Kuropat. "But in the end we had to recruit for females to work the Hot Shot crews. But it's still a male-dominated job, yet we don't feel any discrimination from anybody, there is a mutual respect for everyone today." Donelle Birk, 32, is a division supervisor and worked actively on the 300 acre Cyclone Ridge fire. She had up to 20 people under her on the ground and guided some of the plane, helicopters and dozers in her division.

"I've been working on the fires for about 10 years," says Birk. I'm an initial firefighter, we try to keep fires under control before they get bigger or start to threaten structures."  Birk, who works 18-hour shifts during fire season, says she usually works in the service industry and is only a seasonal firefighter.

"I simply like being out in the woods," says Birk. "Fighting fires can be a very rewarding experience."  

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Firefighter's photo gets a life on the web, continued

Unfortunately, the photographer’s name and details of the image got lost along the way. The rumors began swirling. “This was taken by a friend of a friend near Hamilton,” one e-mail caption read. “ Thought you would like this,” read another. It was taken with a disposable camera by a firefighter, or maybe a tourist. It was a shot of elk in the Firehole River during the 1988 Yellowstone National Park fires. It was digitally faked.

The public usually isn’t allowed that close to that kind of inferno, so the best bet was that some kind of firefighter took the photo. Most of the fires that close to water this summer occurred in the Bitterroot.

The Bitterroot National Forest information office had heard of the picture, but wasn’t sure of the photographer. Someone in the office had heard it was taken by someone attached to Incident Commander Joe Stam’s Type 1 team.

Stam is based in Alaska, and a call to the Tongass National Forest office there determined he and his team were now stationed at the Clear Creek Complex of fires near Challis, Idaho. Information officer Ann Jeffries had seen the photo, and found someone who knew it was taken by John McColgan, a fire behavior analyst.

But McColgan wasn’t there anymore. He’d left a week ago for Fairbanks to be present for the birth of a new son. A co-worker at the Alaska Fire Service office in Fairbanks tracked him down to his doctor’ s office, where first son Jack was getting a checkup. “That’s a once-in-a-lifetime look there,” McColgan said Thursday from Fairbanks. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and it ranks in the top three days of fire behavior I’ve seen.”

The day was Aug. 6, the Sunday when several forest fires converged near Sula into a firestorm that overran 100,000 acres and destroyed 10 homes. Temperatures in the flame front were estimated at more than 800 degrees. Nevertheless, McColgan said the wildlife appeared to be taking the crisis in stride, gathering near the East Fork of the Bitterroot River where it crosses under U.S. Highway 93.

“They know where to go, where their safe zones are,” McColgan said. “ A lot of wildlife did get driven down there to the river. There were some bighorn sheep there. A small deer was standing right underneath me, under the bridge.”

McColgan snapped the photo with a Kodak DC280 digital camera. Since he was working as a Forest Service firefighter, the shot is public property and cannot be sold or used for commercial purposes. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has made arrangements to use it on one of its magazine covers, and it’s been posted on the National Interagency Fire Center’s photo gallery.  McColgan said sometime last week, a friend innocently found the image in an office computer and e-mailed a copy to another friend.

“On Sunday and Monday it really flooded on the e-mail,” he said. “I’ve got a stack of eight phone messages today asking about it. I couldn’t have profited from it, so I guess I’ m glad so many people are enjoying it.”  

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Charred logs used to prevent soil erosion in scorched valley, continued

About 400 acres in the Conner area will get this treatment. One result is that a stream flowing into Laird Creek is better protected from soil erosion. And downstream homeowners are better protected from flash floods that could occur if hillside soil is not stabilized. This “log terracing” is one of several techniques that a special team of environmental rehabilitation experts has prescribed for severely burned drainage in western Montana forests. The logs are intended to slow the water that will flow downhill.
“It’s to avoid a catastrophic slide of sediment,” said Will Williams, information officer for the rehabilitation team, which is prescribing measures for burned land in the Bitterroot, Lolo and Beaverhead national forests, and in Idaho’s Salmon-Challis National Forest.
The team is comprised of hydrologists, soil scientists, engineers, geologists, biologists, archaeologists and mapping specialists from the Forest Service and other agencies. After analyzing each burned area, the team drafts a plan for short-term rehabilitation and long-term environmental recovery.  Williams said officials have do not yet have final plans for all of the burned zones on all of the forests.
Some of the remedies prescribed for immediate relief include seeding for grass and mulching with straw, as well as log terracing.  Scorched hillsides that lost their trees are exposed to direct sunlight and become particularly vulnerable to invasions by noxious weeds. Crews will use herbicides on some of those areas, for weed control. They also will rake soils that got so hot, they became water repellent.
The Bitterroot Valley may have burned hotter than some other areas in the region because it was drier, said Greg Kujawa, a Forest Service information officer. Around 293,350 acres have burned there this summer.
Many techniques the forest rehabilitation team is using have been used successfully elsewhere, in some cases since 1974. But given the magnitude and intensity of the summer fires in the Bitterroot Valley, forest officials expect that many of the recovery efforts here will attract researchers and scientists interested in the outcomes.

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