Human-Caused Blazes Call Attention to Fire Danger

By Courtney Lowery, 7-28-06

	Caption: POINT OF ORIGIN Western Montana's Woodchuck Fire is believed to have been human caused and to have started behind this former home.

At least four of the large fires scorching land in Western Montana this week were started by people -- and across the Northern Rockies, reports show a high number of human-caused fires this season.

The trend highlights the need for people to be vigilant in what fire officials say is "very high to extreme" fire danger in our neck of the woods this summer, which is why come early Monday morning, Western Montana will be in Stage II fire restrictions.

Stage II restrictions mean absolutely no campfires, no smoking except inside a building or vehicle and no off-road motorized use. They also mean no welding, using a torch or explosives or running a chainsaw or other equipment powered by an internal combustion engine for felling, bucking, skidding, road building or woodcutting between the hours of 1 p.m. to 1 a.m.

The restrictions apply to the Lolo, Bitteroot and portions of the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forests and state lands and private forested lands within the boundaries of Mineral County, Missoula County south of Summit Lake, Powell County, Ravalli County, Granite County, Anaconda-Deer Lodge County, and Butte-Silver Bow County. They also apply to the parts of Lake County and Flathead County on Flathead Indian Reservation a portion of Sanders County outside the Kootenai National Forest. (NOTE: This is a more detailed list of restrictions than we'd had before) For a detailed list of restrictions across the region, click here: http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/fire/nrcg/restrictions_index.htm. And, for a good description of what the restrictions mean, Click here for Stage I and click here for Stage II.

The Northern Rockies Coordination Center reports a total of 1,561 fire starts this year, 1,052 of them human-caused. That sounds like a lot, but there are a few big caveats to those numbers. First, the ratio is weighted heavily by the number of human-caused fires on tribal lands, which year to date has been 570 fires (out of 625 total fires).

And, while it seems the majority of fires in Western Montana have been human-caused, most of the large fires in the eastern part of the state have come from a large lightning cell that passed through early this month. Overall, Western Montana has been fairly quiet -- at least until the last week or so -- for thunderstorms, so the number of lightning caused fires has been low.

Also, the number of acres burned by human-caused fires is significantly lower than lightning-started blazes -- likely because human-caused fires are generally closer to town and so quicker to access for initial attack. Total, only 24,100 acres have burned by human-started fires compared to 463,403 acres by lightning-ignited fires in the Northern Rockies. Then, there's the fact that that since human-caused fires are usually the ones closer to town, they're more visible and often more devastating (because they're closer to urban interface). That makes it fair to say we're more aware of them than the small little fires popping up in wild areas from lightning.

In Montana, the numbers over the last decade or so break down to 51 percent of fires coming from lightning, 49 percent from humans, said Dan Bushnell, spokesman for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

Bushnell said really, overall, it seems Montana is on pace for the number of human-caused versus lightning-caused fires.

But -- as aforementioned -- it is still all "an indication of how dry it is out there," said Bob Gliman, the assistant director of Northern Rockies fire operations at the NRCC. [End of article]