Congressman makes case for forest management during Glacier fire tour

A veil of smoke cradled the fire camp set up at the KOA campground at West Glacier on Wednesday morning as fire officials managing the Howe Ridge Fire met with Rep. Greg Gianforte to discuss the fire’s activity.

The base, set up less than 10 miles from the fire’s southern edge in Glacier National Park, is the launch point for helicopters, water tankers, engines and other equipment, along with over 260 firefighters assigned to the fire now estimated at 10,300 acres.

The Type 1 team is responsible for three other fires burning nearby on the Flathead Forest — the Whale Butte, Coal Ridge and Paola Ridge fires — but their primary focus is on the one eating away at the forest along Lake McDonald, which is approximately nine times the size of the other three fires combined.

Though national parks, Glacier included, remain protected against logging and other commercial harvesting as land set aside for nature to rule, Gianforte left the morning briefing with fire officials with one answer to the wildfires — forest management.

“We need to look upstream and I’ve really championed forest management reform back in congress. We need to get back to managing our forests again, instead of breathing them each summer,” Gianforte said, noting the wildfire smoke over the region.

“I’m not suggesting we should do something different in the park,” he continued. “It’s just an observation that we have three fires that are hundreds of acres and one that’s over 10,000 acres. Part of the difference is that forest management was done in the first three cases and not in the last one.”

Operations Senior Chief Todd Abel also commented on the difference forest management has made on the 560-acre Paola Ridge Fire burning near Essex, as opposed to the growth exhibited on the uncontained Howe Ridge Fire.

“The other benefit to [the Paola] fire is that … the local forest had done some fuel reduction, some timber sales in there, and that helped slow that fire down, which is a huge asset for us,” Abel said.

A break in high temperatures and dry conditions early in the week did allow firefighters to get a foothold on the Howe Ridge Fire on Tuesday and Wednesday, working to open up an area along the inside North Fork Road to the south of the fire as a control line they hope to prevent the blaze from crossing.

Directly south of the road is Fish Creek Campground, currently evacuated of visitors other than the firefighters working on point protection around an old boathouse built in the 1930s.

An estimated 2 miles of forest stood between the fire and the campground.

Abel said the North Fork Road was a less than ideal place to establish their control line, but it provided a good enough barrier to make it worth a shot. The action plan, he said, was a slow and steady indirect attack, utilizing aircraft and control lines to minimize asset loss.

To the north, the morning smoke inversion choked out most of the view of the shore across from the Lake McDonald Lodge. The historic building, normally bustling with visitors this time of year, sat quiet and empty before a vacant parking lot in the haze. The lodge was evacuated last week,

A single sailboat braved the waters of Lake McDonald.

The smell and taste of smoke filled the air over a dock looking out over the lake, and on the other side, plumes of smoke ascending from the fire slowly came into view as the inversion began to rise with the temperature.

Directly north of the lake, crews utilized less conventional methods of fire control in addition to hose lines running 24 hours a day to keep the natural resources in the area from drying out and the fire from progressing farther toward the Going-to-the-Sun Road.

Plastic sphere devices, or PSDs, were dropped from helicopters over the last two days, slowing ignition around 300 acres in a straight line on the northeastern front of the fire, putting up a firm, controllable boundary around half a mile from the scenic highway.

Another rise in temperatures expected at the end of the week will continue to dry out the timber and other fuels feeding the fire on both ends, and crews anticipate an uptick in fire activity to follow.

Fire information officer Lacey England stood on the dock before the rising plumes, noting that though fires bring hardships, they remain an inevitable and necessary part of nature’s course.

“We make our own lives harder when we try to rule the world,” England said.

When she isn’t leading a gaggle of reporters and politicians through fire-affected areas of the park, England works as a specialized firefighter, rappelling out of aircrafts onto the scene of a fire.

She said that firefighters continue to do what they can to control the fire’s intensity but reiterated that containment will take time due to the hazardous terrain and snag fall.

Structure protection remains one of the prime concerns of all crews involved, but both Abel and England stressed that firefighter safety trumped all.

Evacuation orders remain in place for the North McDonald Road, Lake McDonald Lodge area, private residences along the Going-to-the-Sun Road, and Sprague Creek, Avalanche, and Fish Creek campgrounds.

An evacuation warning is in place from the Quarter Circle Bridge Road north. This includes Apgar, the Grist Road, and all areas accessed from Quarter Circle Bridge Road. A separate evacuation warning is in place for all park areas north of the Bowman Lake Road junction with the Inside North Fork Road due to Whale Butte Fire.

The Going-to-the-Sun Road remains open between St. Mary and Logan Pass. It is closed between the foot of Lake McDonald and Logan Pass.

For a recorded Howe Ridge Fire update, call 406)888-7077.

Reporter Mary Cloud Taylor can be reached at 758-4459 or mtaylor@dailyinterlake.com.