Fire near Polson burns 3,000 acres

The Daily Inter Lake

A wildfire erupted southwest of Polson on Tuesday, burning 3,000 acres overnight and forcing the evacuation of two homes.

The Garceau Fire was detected at about noon Tuesday, burning 11 miles southwest of Polson on Confederated Salish-Kootenai tribal lands.

"We did have to evacuate two homes last night and put another 20 on alert," said Rich Jansen, tribal fire information officer.

The fire has mostly been burning on grasslands, but as of this morning it was moving into steep terrain with heavy timber, "where it gets to be a bigger problem," Jansen said.

There are 120 firefighters on the fire, along with bulldozers and other heavy equipment. About 350 additional firefighters have been ordered and a Type Two incident management team is expected to assume management of the fire by this afternoon.

Extreme fire behavior is expected to continue through today.

For a complete story, see Thursday's Daily Inter Lake.