Articles Tagged With: Rockies
As crews get a handle on the Big Creek Fire near Emigrant in the Paradise Valley, fire officials have confimed at least three more buildings burned in the fire's weekend blowup.
Earlier reports showed just six buildings -- three of them homes -- burned in the fire, but new aerial reports show at least three more, said fire information officer Marilyn Krause. There's no word yet on what kind of buildings the other three were.
With the help of cooler temperatures Monday and Tuesday, the fire is holding at 12,000 acres and crews have line around 20 percent of the fire. That 20 percent is primarily from secure lines holding well on the south and southeastern "horseshoe" between the 50 or so threatened homes and the fire.
The National Park Service released a draft of its new management policies Tuesday, and it did not include controversial provisions that would have tipped the agnecy's balance far towards recreatino at the expense of preservation...in related environment news, Rocky Barker at the Idaho Statesman has a good piece on a new effort by Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo to reform the Endangered Species Act. Reform. Hopefully the effort will be more constructive than House Resource Committee chairman Richard Pombo's partisan attempt to all but gut the law.
If you're followng the West's (and maybe the country's) biggest current policy issue, check out New West contributor Brooke Hewes' outstanding reports from Montana Gov. Schweitzer's energy symposium.
Also in Grok today: America's second-fastest-growing company, a Christian stand-up comic, new horizons for Sundance, lucky lapdance recipients, and, yes, that darn Powerball thing.
Strange isn’t it? I become New West’s Missoula editor, then promptly dash off back EAST for most of September, without so much as a greeting or a wave goodbye.
I am, however, glad to report that thanks to that great phenomenon we call wi-fi, even here in western North Carolina, I can recommend a great little live performance coming up Saturday at Shadow’s Keep.
A newly formed trio, who just may end up being called Doc Rogers and the Rock Dodgers, will be playing old time music from 7 to 10 PM at the lounge with a view.
Great Falls, Montana’s very own Aaron Parrett will join Missoula fiddler Carrie Stensrud and guitarist Caroline Keys of the Broken Valley Road Show for several sets of tunes that will have you yearning for back porches, pot pie and moonshine before the night is through.
And assuming you won’t be joining me here in the tarheel state, it’s probably the closest thing you’ll get to Appalachia this weekend.
Each time I hear LifeFlight hovering over Missoula’s St. Patrick Hospital as it heads toward what I image to be some heart-wrenching medical emergency, I cringe. It’s been two years since Gunnar’s accident and the sound still rattles me.
When Gunnar fell 70 feet in the Bitterroot’s Kootenai Canyon, he landed on his heels just inches away from a pile of sharp rocks. Within a half hour — thanks to another climber’s cell phone — a nearby field was transformed into a make-shift landing pad.
After 40 agonizing minutes on Highway 93, I arrived at the hospital just as Gunnar was heading into surgery. And despite shuddering screams lurching from his broken body, the doctor said he was going to be OK. LifeFlight, he added, had made all the difference.
So when I recently heard that Missoula would soon have two air ambulances, I thought: Great. The more the better. And according to Dale Dallman, manager of emergency services at Missoula’s Community Medical Center, whose CareFlight will begin operations on Oct.3, that’s precisely how Missoulians should view the situation.
Others, like LifeFlight Chief Nurse Larry Peterman, are wary.
Cool, relatively wet weather Monday held down the Rockin' Fire burning near Lake Como in the Bitterroot National Forest, but crews were expecting some action Tuesday as temperatures increase and humidity drops.
The fire was still mapped at 3,500 acres Tuesday with officials waiting for a new count. It is not threatening any structures.
The Helena Hot Shots are planning to work Tuesday on securing lines along the Rock Creek Trail west of the lake to keep the fire from jumping into the Rock Creek drainage south of the fire. Meanwhile, helicopters are getting in to do water drops on the east flank of the fires.
A Type II Incident Command team is now in place. In a release Tuesday morning, commander Stan Benes said, “Our strategy on this fire is to confine and contain. We want to be able to use our resources where it is safe and feasible to contain the fire.�
So far, there are about 50 people on the fire and two helicopters on hand.
Anybody else feel that? I thought for sure my bedroom was moving. I checked under the bed for random animals that may have scurried into shake my house. Then, my Mom called, "Did you just feel that?" My mom is in Great Falls.
Yep. An earthquake. Word is it was felt here in Missoula, in Helena and apparently really shook Great Falls. It woke my Grandma Virgina up anyway. And let me tell you, that's a chore.
Qwest has raised its offer for MCI, adding more cash and protections against a decline in Qwest stock. The offer is now 20% higher than the Verizon deal that MCI has agreed to accept. I'm sticking with my prediction that Qwest will lose this one.
Hunter S. Thompson Kills HimselfThe Rockies lost one of its true iconoclasts and most talented writers last night when Hunter S. Thompson died of a self-inflicited gunshot wound. Thompson had become something of a self-parody over the last decade, as his personal demons took tighter hold and his once-prodigious output declined. It may be that his infatuation with drugs, booze and the outlaw life (“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone,� he once wrote, “but they've always worked for me.�) prevented him, in the end, from attaining the true literary greatness that had always been his goal.
