2001: The year Moose Fire roared for 71,000 acres

The Moose Fire was one of about a dozen lightning-triggered fires that cropped up on the Whitefish Divide on Aug. 14, 2001. While the others were extinguished, the Moose Fire was unstoppable despite a $20 million firefighting effort.

There were several runaway days in which the fire put off eye-grabbing mushroom clouds. Ultimately, rain and cold weather put an end to the fire in September, but not before it had burned 71,000 acres, crossing the North Fork Road and the North Fork Flathead River on a fiery run into Glacier National Park.

At first, the fire was overshadowed by the Werner Peak Fire, which emerged immediately after the lightning storm, burning uphill on the western slopes of the Whitefish Range.

The Moose Fire, however, was trouble from the time it was first spotted on Aug. 16. By the time an engine crew arrived that day, it was a running crown fire that had covered 20 acres.

The next day, it grew to 110 acres, and by the morning of Aug. 20, it was 340 acres, attracting more attention and resources than the ongoing Werner Peak fire. That afternoon, the fire exploded on its first major run to the east, growing to 2,200 acres.

From that point on, it was positioned for eastward growth, on two fingerlike fronts into the Coal Creek and Big Creek drainages. On Aug. 27, the fire went nuclear, producing a massive mushroom cloud over the North Fork as it grew from 4,700 acres to 14,000 acres.

“Obviously, the fire has blown up completely,” Flathead County Sheriff Jim Dupont pronounced at the time.

After that, it was just a matter of time before the fire made a run into Glacier National Park. It came on Aug. 31, as high winds whipped the fire over the North Fork Road and the North Fork River.

Heroic structure protection efforts paid off, with buildings surviving in the Home Ranch Bottoms area near Polebridge and at the Glacier Institute’s Big Creek campus. The fire had grown to 40,000 acres, and by that time, a fire camp for 1,000 people had developed on the Columbia Falls Aluminum Co. property just north of Columbia Falls. The thump of helicopters and the drone of retardant bombers had become constant.

The fire continued to grow, mostly inside the park, to about 65,000 acres on Sept. 6, when the first measurable rain in weeks came to the North Fork. Even with more rain, the fire managed to gradually expand to 71,000 acres, with 96 miles of fire perimeter in early October.