Articles Tagged With: Flathead Valley
The Red Eagle fire burning on Blackfeet Tribal and park lands on the eastern edge of Glacier National Park grew 500 acres Saturday to a total of 27,000. The fire is creeping and smoldering a little, fire information officer Karen Semple said Sunday morning. Movement is expected to the south and west in the Upper Divide Creek, Red Eagle Creek and Hudson Bay Creek areas within park boundaries. The fire is about 50 percent contained.
The cold front that moved in Friday and Saturday lowered the temperatures and raised the humidity for a bit, and crews took advantage, but with temperatures heading back up and humidity levels down, they may be in for a long week. The fire team is expecting extreme fire behavior today, even with very light winds.
Western Montana's got blazes burning from Paradise Valley to Glacier National Park. Here's a roundup of the six fires nearly 2,000 firefighters are working hard to put out -- without much help from mother nature.
Western Montana remains under Stage II fire restrictions. Stage II restrictions mean absolutely no campfires, no smoking except inside a building or vehicle and no off-road or off-trail 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.
With evacuations in St. Mary village lifted and the northern and western sides of the Red Eagle Fire behaving, all eyes are now the eastern side of the 26,000-acre blaze, where the two unoccupied log cabins and one empty trailer burned this week on Blackfeet Tribal lands.
But with the help of a quiet day on the fire, crews were able to get into the area and dig lines, boosting the containment from 30 to 40 percent by nightfall Thursday. "We made significant progress," said fire information officer Karen Semple. The fire was holding at 26,000 acres. Total, the fire's perimeter is 45 miles long.
There, the terrain is rugged and the fire is active, threatening at least 18 ranch homes and grazing lands, Semple said. Structure protection crews were going door to door Wednesday and Thursday getting information on what kind of protection land owners wanted or needed if the fire gets closer. Meanwhile, dozers and crews were trying to get in lines on the perimeter of the fire.
Crews are taking advantage of cool nights while they've got them on the now 25,000-acre Red Eagle Fire, burning on tribal and National Park lands near the eastern entrance into Glacier National Park.
"Things are looking really good," said Kimberly Delgado Nelson, the lead information officer on the fire. The fire is now 20 percent contained.
The southeast corner of the fire did kick up a little Tuesday afternoon and crews worked overnight there and on the northwest corner near St. Mary Lake to get line in while the fire laid down in higher humidity and temperatures in the 40s. Sunday, the night the fire went from 8,600 acres to 22,000, it kept torching and spotting and actively burning into the wee hours of the morning.
The fire is burning a little less than a mile from St. Mary village at the eastern entrance to the park. The village and the nearby campgrounds remain evacuated, but Nelson said Wednesday afternoon, fire officials will be discussing the possibility of lifting some evacuations. "We'll see how they're feeling then," she said. The fire has not been active on that northern flank near the village and lines there are pretty secure already, Nelson said.
UPDATE: Firefighters working the 22,000-acre fire burning about a mile from the St. Mary village on the eastern border of Glacier National Park got a little help Monday from cooler temperatures.
The fire was still flaring up inside the edges, but overall, it was a quiet day. "It's still skunking around, but it's quite a bit better," said fire information officer Shannon Downey.
Pushed by erratic cold front winds, made huge runs Sunday night, sometimes shooting 100-foot flames into the air, fire officials reported. That kind of growth, however, seemed mundane for the fire, which grew Saturday from about 800 acres to 8,600 acres, prompting the evacuation of the St. Mary village and campgrounds nearby. Engines from rural and volunteer fire departments in the area are on scene doing structure protection in the village. No buildings have been reported burned.
