New fires erupt

A change in the weather put a damper on large forest fires in Northwest Montana, but the same weather system brought a flurry of new lightning-triggered fires to the Swan Lake Ranger District.

Initial attack firefighters were diverted to the northern end of the Mission Mountains, south of Bigfork, along with two helicopters and retardant tankers, to respond to the afternoon lighting storm. Initially, three new starts were detected but there were seven by the end of the day.

With the help of a wetting rain over the Swan Lake area, it appeared that all of the new fires were contained at no greater than 2 acres, said Denise Germann, public information officer for the Flathead National Forest.

All new starts are getting an aggressive response, because of the manner in which several large fires have rapidly grown in recent days.

The Flathead National Forest and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation have beefed up their initial attack capabilities with resources from outside the area. Responding to one of the fires above Swan Lake was a Montana National Guard Blackhawk helicopter. And a four-man engine crew out of Arizona, temporarily based at the Hungry Horse Station, responded to another start up the Porcupine Creek drainage just south of Swan Lake.

Meanwhile, large fires in the region calmed down considerably after cloud cover, higher humidities and cooler temperatures moved in Tuesday afternoon.

The Chippy Creek Fire, burning north of Hot Springs, became the largest in the state on Monday, when it grew by more than 10,000 acres to a total of 50,550 acres, according to a size-up released at noon Tuesday. The next largest fire in the state was the 44,000-acre Ahorn Fire burning on the East Front of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex.

The Chippy Fire's rapid growth to the east prompted a Monday night evacuation order for about 50 homes between the Lower Dry Fork Reservoir and a subdivision just south of Hubbart Reservoir, and five miles east to the Sanders County line.

But fire activity changed substantially Tuesday afternoon.

"From what I've gathered, things slowed down tremendously," said Dyan Bone, fire information officer at the incident command post at Hot Springs.

But the fire still has potential for tremendous growth.

"It has been very resistant to containment," said Tom Jones, fire behavior specialist with the Arizona incident command team assigned to the fire.

Indeed, the Chippy Creek Fire has mostly burned through heavy timber on steep, inaccessible slopes. And there are considerable swaths of timber still in its path.

Jones has modeled the fire to have an 80 to 100 percent probability of growing as large as 140,000 acres - but, that computer model is based on an assumption that there will be no suppression action.

And there is a strategy that is expected to stop the fire, Jones said.

"Rather than have a series of firelines with black on both sides, we have set down and determined spots that will give us a high probability of success" in cutting off the leading eastern front of the fire, Jones said. "We will meet the fire on our own terms in fuels that we choose."

A Tuesday afternoon update from the Brush Creek Fire, 23 miles southwest of Whitefish, reported "fire activity decreased substantially" because of changed weather conditions.

As of 5 p.m., the fire was sized at 21,980 acres, with the most recent growth occurring Monday evening, when the fire reached a trigger point for a 24-hour evacuation warning for residents in the Good Creek drainage.

There is a 12-hour trigger point, and a four-hour trigger point that will lead to an evacuation order for those residents. But the fire did not advance towards those locations Tuesday afternoon, said Mary Huels, fire information officer.

The break in fire activity allowed for ground crews and heavy equipment to make "good progress" in cutting indirect firelines ahead of the fire to protect homes in the Good Creek drainage, Huels said.

The Skyland Fire, burning south of Marias Pass on the Continental Divide, grew from 33,000 acres Tuesday morning to an estimated 36,975 acres by late afternoon.

Fire growth has mostly been on the southern flank, where no homes are threatened. A Forest Service cabin about three miles from the southern front has been wrapped with fire-resistant material.

Most firefighting efforts have focused on keeping the fire south of U.S. 2, Glacier National Park and away from East Glacier, and maintaining firelines on the western flank. It is considered 40 percent contained and there are more than 900 people assigned.