Lightning keeps fire crews busy

The Daily Inter Lake

Firefighters continued to shut down larger fires Thursday in Northwest Montana, while patrols continued to come across new starts, mostly from recent lightning activity.

The 883-acre Camp 32 fire southwest of Eureka was expected to be fully contained by Thursday night. Residents who had been evacuated from fewer than a dozen homes on the north end of Pinkham Creek Road were allowed to return Wednesday night.

The Kelly Point fire, which has burned 3,270 acres in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, was considerably slowed by 23 firefighters, who have been working to prevent the fire from reaching the South Fork Flathead River.

"They didn't have a whole lot of fire activity, and they are doing a real good job along the river," said fire information officer Dick Fleishman on Thursday afternoon.

Fire managers were expected to decide during the next day or two whether to reopen two trails that parallel the river's east and west banks, and the river itself, Fleishman said.

The Kelly Point fire is about a mile south of the Forest Service's Black Bear Cabin, which is used for administrative purposes during the summer.

A crew of 10 firefighters was airlifted to the 100-acre Limestone Fire, about 20 miles east of Spotted Bear. The crew was able to cut fireline around most of the fire's perimeter, but part of the perimeter is in areas that are entirely inaccessible, Fleishman said.

Elsewhere on the Flathead National Forest, initial attack firefighters put out a series of small lightning fires that were discovered Wednesday. A fire on national forest lands in the King Creek area, about two miles west of Big Mountain, was found Thursday by Plum Creek Timber Co. workers, with the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation responding.

A new fire that has covered three acres was found in the wilderness near the boundary between the Flathead forest and the Lewis and Clark forest. That fire is being managed for "fire use" with no suppression effort.