Fire season off to slow start
by Brent Shrum, Kootenai Valley Record
August 13, 2010
The 2010 fire season is off to a slow start in northwest Montana, but local Forest Service officials say it’s too soon to assume the Kootenai won’t burn.
"We’re having one of the slowest fire seasons in the last 20 years," said Kootenai National Forest Supervisor Paul Bradford.
The only years over the past two decades with fewer fires by the first week of August were 1992 and 1997. Although the1992 fire season started out slow, "in October we ended up with a huge blowout," Bradford said.
In 1997, the fires never did arrive, said KNF assistant fire management officer Dan Rose.
"That year, it never picked up," Rose said. "We ended up burning 17 acres on the Kootenai all year."
Before a series of electrical storms moved through the area late last week, there had been 38 fires reported on the Kootenai, Rose said. The largest, near Estelle Lake in Idaho, was just under 18 acres. Most were under an acre in size.
As of Monday morning, an additional eight new fires had been reported, with six on the Kootenai National Forest and two on land managed by the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation in the Fisher River drainage, Rose said.
Relatively high humidity and lack of strong winds has helped keep the fires in check, Rose said. The largest of the new fires, at McGuire Mountain in the Eureka area, was around 15 acres on Monday. The second largest, in the Dunn Creek area, was around 2 acres in size.
"Both of those are going pretty well," Rose said.
Two crews – around 40 people – were assigned to the McGuire fire, Rose said.
The lack of fires has allowed KNF summer crews to keep working on various improvement projects funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Bradford said.
"If we had an active fire season, we might be having to pull some of those folks off and do some initial attack, but we haven’t had to do that," he said.
Going a little farther back, the year that most closely matches up with this one with regard to weather and fires is 1981, Rose said. Like 2010, that year saw a lot of rain in June and July. As of early August 1981, there had been only 20 fires, but by the end of the month there were more than 100.
"You just never know," Rose said.
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Editor’s Note: See the August 10, 2010 edition of the Kootenai Valley Record for the printed version of this story. The Kootenai Valley Record publishes once a week, on Tuesdays, in Libby, Montana. They are a locally owned community newspaper, located at 403 Mineral Avenue in Libby. For in-county and out-of-county subscription information, call 406-293-2424, or e-mail kvrecord@gmail.com.
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