smalls
Well-known member
I guess I can scratch one area off the list that I planned on hunting this fall 
<From the Helena Independent Record>
Meriwether fire
The Meriwether fire burning north of Helena is now the No. 1 priority fire in the nation.
In infrared flight overnight showed the blaze has grown from an estimated 20,300 acres Tuesday to 31,238 acres on Wednesday.
“At the morning briefing, the deputy incident commander (Steve Gage) said that we were dealing with fire behavior that’s off the charts,” said Amy Teegarden, Helena National Forest spokesperson. “He said we are rewriting the textbooks of how fire spreads.”
For example, the flames are burning downhill at night in grass, which is unheard of, Teegarden said.
“Grasses never burn at night, and grasses always burn uphill, because of the radiant heat; it warms up the fuel ahead of it and that’s how it burns,” Teegarden said. “And this fire behavior isn’t isolated to Meriwether; we’re seeing this everywhere.”
Smoke from the blaze filled the Helena Valley Wednesday, and at night, the flames are visible from certain areas in the city. The southern edge of the burn is about 10 miles from the Helena Valley.
The No. 1 designation probably is due to the ongoing evacuations, as well as the fact that firefighters are gaining some ground on other blazes in the nation, Teegarden noted. Being ranked the highest priority fire means that as resources like engines, aircraft and crews aren’t needed elsewhere, they’ll come here.
Most of the growth in the fire is to the southeast and northeast, as winds on Wednesday pushed through the area. The fire has moved halfway through the Beartooth Wildlife Management area east of Holter Lake, and is about a mile from the small enclave of Nelson, north of York.
So far, it hasn’t burned any structures — since most of the fire is within the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness Area — but more than 80 homes have been evacuated, including those on the east side of Holter Lake from the Holter Lake Lodge south to Log Gulch Campground, the American Bar subdivision and scattered homes in Nelson and along Beaver Creek.
The Meriwether fire north of Helena grew by about 5,000 acres Tuesday to 20,300 acres, as additional campers and residents were evacuated along the blaze’s northern flank.
About 60 residents and campers were ordered to leave the area east of Holter Lake Tuesday, after the fire crept within a quarter-mile of one of the campgrounds.
Area homeowner Lyla Amato watched the exodus from her camper, which she and her husband, Joe, had parked next to a bridge spanning the Missouri River “so we could stay close by and see what was happening.”
The couple was ordered to leave their seasonal lake home Monday night. With smoke hanging in the air, they grabbed important documents, photo albums, a computer, some food and two 5-gallon jugs of water, then drove their camper to a parking lot next to the Wolf Creek Bridge. A fire engine and helicopter stood in a nearby meadow.
“It felt a bit silly, like we shouldn’t be (evacuating), but I thought it’s better to put all our stuff back whole than to take it out in pieces,” Amato said.
About 40 homes in the American Bar subdivision near the fire’s southeastern edge remained evacuated, as did residences in and around the small community of Nelson.
The Meriwether fire was first reported July 21 and is thought to be started by a lightning strike. It is burning not far from where 13 smokejumpers died in 1949 fighting the Mann Gulch fire.
Amy Teegarden, Helena National Forest spokesperson, said the fire made a late afternoon run Tuesday toward the north and northeast, burning quickly through grasslands in the Beartooth Wildlife Management Area. It also managed to outpace a hotshot firefighting crew, which was trying to establish a fire line along the eastern edge of the fire near Log Gulch.
“Those big columns of smoke we saw this afternoon was the fire going into Bear Prairie and Willow Creek,” Teegarden said. “In the Beartooth, where it got into the grass, they had flame lengths of 9 to 10 feet and it ran about a mile an hour. When it got into the timber, it ran about one-quarter to three-quarters of a mile an hour, with 100-foot flame lengths in the tree crowns.”
Crews estimated that they have the fire about 30 percent contained, but reiterated Tuesday that the fire, which is burning in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness Area, is expected to be a “long-term” event of weeks or even months that probably only will be extinguished by rain or snow.
The Meriwether fire has been difficult to deal with from the start, with officials noting that the steep terrain and dry timber made conditions too hazardous to put crews on the ground.
Tuesday night, Townsend District Ranger Mike Cole, who is helping coordinated firefighting efforts on the Meriwether fire, said the logistics of fighting a 23-square-mile fire growing in two opposite directions, separated by a roadless area, adds to the difficulties of this blaze.
Crews initially set up a base camp at the Oxbow Ranch near Wolf Creek so they could work on the Little Wolf Creek, the Novak and the Ahorn fires. On Tuesday, the bulk of that camp was moved north of Nelson to Sweats Gulch, but later that day the decision was made to return the camp to the Oxbow Ranch.
Cole noted that it’s 1.5 hours from Helena to Log Gulch, near the northwestern edge of the Meriwether fire. From Helena, it’s another 40 minutes in a different direction to Sweats Gulch. The only way to get from Log Gulch to Sweats Gulch basically involves traveling from York to Helena, north on I-15 to Wolf Creek.
“So if the resourced need to move from Sweats Gulch to the north end, it takes about 2.5 hours to get there,” Cole said. “So we’re moving it back to Wolf Creek because it’s a more central location.
“This has been a game of chess from day one. Having four fires at once, we’re moving resources on a daily basis and sometimes more than once a day, depending on where the greatest threat is located.”
<From the Helena Independent Record>
Meriwether fire
The Meriwether fire burning north of Helena is now the No. 1 priority fire in the nation.
In infrared flight overnight showed the blaze has grown from an estimated 20,300 acres Tuesday to 31,238 acres on Wednesday.
“At the morning briefing, the deputy incident commander (Steve Gage) said that we were dealing with fire behavior that’s off the charts,” said Amy Teegarden, Helena National Forest spokesperson. “He said we are rewriting the textbooks of how fire spreads.”
For example, the flames are burning downhill at night in grass, which is unheard of, Teegarden said.
“Grasses never burn at night, and grasses always burn uphill, because of the radiant heat; it warms up the fuel ahead of it and that’s how it burns,” Teegarden said. “And this fire behavior isn’t isolated to Meriwether; we’re seeing this everywhere.”
Smoke from the blaze filled the Helena Valley Wednesday, and at night, the flames are visible from certain areas in the city. The southern edge of the burn is about 10 miles from the Helena Valley.
The No. 1 designation probably is due to the ongoing evacuations, as well as the fact that firefighters are gaining some ground on other blazes in the nation, Teegarden noted. Being ranked the highest priority fire means that as resources like engines, aircraft and crews aren’t needed elsewhere, they’ll come here.
Most of the growth in the fire is to the southeast and northeast, as winds on Wednesday pushed through the area. The fire has moved halfway through the Beartooth Wildlife Management area east of Holter Lake, and is about a mile from the small enclave of Nelson, north of York.
So far, it hasn’t burned any structures — since most of the fire is within the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness Area — but more than 80 homes have been evacuated, including those on the east side of Holter Lake from the Holter Lake Lodge south to Log Gulch Campground, the American Bar subdivision and scattered homes in Nelson and along Beaver Creek.
The Meriwether fire north of Helena grew by about 5,000 acres Tuesday to 20,300 acres, as additional campers and residents were evacuated along the blaze’s northern flank.
About 60 residents and campers were ordered to leave the area east of Holter Lake Tuesday, after the fire crept within a quarter-mile of one of the campgrounds.
Area homeowner Lyla Amato watched the exodus from her camper, which she and her husband, Joe, had parked next to a bridge spanning the Missouri River “so we could stay close by and see what was happening.”
The couple was ordered to leave their seasonal lake home Monday night. With smoke hanging in the air, they grabbed important documents, photo albums, a computer, some food and two 5-gallon jugs of water, then drove their camper to a parking lot next to the Wolf Creek Bridge. A fire engine and helicopter stood in a nearby meadow.
“It felt a bit silly, like we shouldn’t be (evacuating), but I thought it’s better to put all our stuff back whole than to take it out in pieces,” Amato said.
About 40 homes in the American Bar subdivision near the fire’s southeastern edge remained evacuated, as did residences in and around the small community of Nelson.
The Meriwether fire was first reported July 21 and is thought to be started by a lightning strike. It is burning not far from where 13 smokejumpers died in 1949 fighting the Mann Gulch fire.
Amy Teegarden, Helena National Forest spokesperson, said the fire made a late afternoon run Tuesday toward the north and northeast, burning quickly through grasslands in the Beartooth Wildlife Management Area. It also managed to outpace a hotshot firefighting crew, which was trying to establish a fire line along the eastern edge of the fire near Log Gulch.
“Those big columns of smoke we saw this afternoon was the fire going into Bear Prairie and Willow Creek,” Teegarden said. “In the Beartooth, where it got into the grass, they had flame lengths of 9 to 10 feet and it ran about a mile an hour. When it got into the timber, it ran about one-quarter to three-quarters of a mile an hour, with 100-foot flame lengths in the tree crowns.”
Crews estimated that they have the fire about 30 percent contained, but reiterated Tuesday that the fire, which is burning in the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness Area, is expected to be a “long-term” event of weeks or even months that probably only will be extinguished by rain or snow.
The Meriwether fire has been difficult to deal with from the start, with officials noting that the steep terrain and dry timber made conditions too hazardous to put crews on the ground.
Tuesday night, Townsend District Ranger Mike Cole, who is helping coordinated firefighting efforts on the Meriwether fire, said the logistics of fighting a 23-square-mile fire growing in two opposite directions, separated by a roadless area, adds to the difficulties of this blaze.
Crews initially set up a base camp at the Oxbow Ranch near Wolf Creek so they could work on the Little Wolf Creek, the Novak and the Ahorn fires. On Tuesday, the bulk of that camp was moved north of Nelson to Sweats Gulch, but later that day the decision was made to return the camp to the Oxbow Ranch.
Cole noted that it’s 1.5 hours from Helena to Log Gulch, near the northwestern edge of the Meriwether fire. From Helena, it’s another 40 minutes in a different direction to Sweats Gulch. The only way to get from Log Gulch to Sweats Gulch basically involves traveling from York to Helena, north on I-15 to Wolf Creek.
“So if the resourced need to move from Sweats Gulch to the north end, it takes about 2.5 hours to get there,” Cole said. “So we’re moving it back to Wolf Creek because it’s a more central location.
“This has been a game of chess from day one. Having four fires at once, we’re moving resources on a daily basis and sometimes more than once a day, depending on where the greatest threat is located.”
