Hot, dry weather challenges fire crews

Spot fires and continued burning up the Rose Creek and Baring Creek drainages on the east side of Glacier National Park brought the Reynolds Creek Fire’s total area up to 3,913 acres by Monday morning.

The Reynolds Creek Fire began about six miles east of Logan Pass on July 21 and quickly spread to the east and northeast, torching the heavily timbered forest along the north shore of St. Mary Lake. Mike Cole, a spokesman for the 467-person firefighting team, said Monday that heat, sustained winds and dry conditions have kept the fire burning hot in the interior while slowly pushing the blaze to the north and east.

“It’s up into Baring Creek and Rose Creek, and it’s kind of been chunking along there, where burning debris will roll down the hill and burn up a stringer of trees,” Cole said. “It’s so dry out there that we’ve actually had fire getting back up and re-burning through the already-burned trees. And that is unheard of.”

However, much of the West Coast smoke that has affected visibility throughout Northwest Montana in the past two days has combined with an inversion over the St. Mary area and actually helped firefighting crews, to an extent.

“When there’s an inversion in there, you don’t get the sun’s rays directly on the fire, so it kind of calms that activity down,” Cole said. “But it’s kind of a two-edged sword: the smoke and the inversion is keeping the fire activity calmed a bit, but you can’t fly water in there because the helicopters can’t see where to drop it.”

Despite the difficulties for aerial support, ground crews continued expanding lines inward on the blaze, with the goal of establishing 100-foot buffers inside all the fire lines. Cole said that effort was nearly complete on the west side of the fire.

Over the weekend, temperatures soared well into the 90s and combined with wind to produce more than 15 separate spot fires, he added, but none were reported Monday as the wind and heat settled down. A cold front Monday night was forecast to bring gusts up to 40 miles per hour and cooler temperatures through the fire area, with sustained winds between 18 and 22 miles per hour today. Highs in St. Mary are forecast to remain in the mid- to upper-70s throughout the week and weekend.

With two-thirds of the fire perimeter contained, Cole said firefighters have continued to make good progress and would change incident commanders Monday night. Greg Poncin will still leave much of his team in place as the new incident commander, Chris Young, transitions in. Cole noted that Young has been working in a management position on the ground since the fire began, and has a strong knowledge of both the fire and the region.

He added that while one helicopter and three of the ground crews on the fire have left to help with suppression efforts elsewhere in the country, the team was retaining all necessary personnel. Eight hotshot crews, five ground crews and seven helicopters were still battling the blaze as of the Monday morning report. Cole noted the team was fortunate to have gotten all the resources it requested, ahead of the severe wildland fires that recently broke out in Washington, Oregon and California.

“All in all, we’re very comfortable with where we’re at on this fire,” he said. “If this had happened right now, we would have been scrounging for any resources we could get, and this fire would have gotten a whole lot bigger.”

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.