While fires were significant and widespread across western Montana, this year's wildfires in the Bitterroot Forest weren't as severe as past summers, and the season wasn't all that unusual compared to other years, said Jack Kirkendall, fire management officer for the forest.

But significant as it was, it could have been worse, given the extreme burning conditions and busy pace across the state.

"A couple of these fires got off to a roaring start," Kirkendall said, including the Frog Pond blaze in late July, "which indicates the conditions were there."

As of Tuesday, 98 fires were "on the books" for the Bitterroot Forest this year, he said. The forest averages around 160 fires a year. The number of fires was well below average, primarily because of less-frequent dry lightning storms, Kirkendall said. Many of the thunderstorms, especially on the southern half of the forest, came with some rain.

But that, of course, doesn't mean there weren't large fires. Federal, volunteer and state firefighters dealt with four large "campaign" fires this summer. Some homeowners were put on evacuation alert.

Blazes burned some 12,000 acres in the Bitterroot National Forest alone, not an unusual figure for summers here, Kirkendall said. That figure, however, doesn't include all the acreage burned by area fires, since the Cooney Ridge Complex, for instance, burned more on state land, Plum Creek Timber Co. lands or adjacent national forests. The Black Frog Complex burned some 8,000 acres near the Idaho-Montana border, but just 500 were on the Bitterroot Forest, Kirkendall said.

While there were large fires this summer, many more blazes were never kept small by "initial attack" firefighting crews. Crews from state, federal and local fire departments kept busy this summer, especially in early August as lightning left fires in drainages and along ridgetops from Idaho to Missoula to the Flathead.

In the Bitterroot National Forest, initial attack crews successfully beat back 96 percent of the new fires before they had a chance to get big.

But some grew large from the get-go. Had lightning started a more typical number of fires, Kirkendall said, the Bitterroot certainly would have seen additional large blazes, since burning conditions were extreme.

"We recognized early on the potential, and as a result of that, beefed up our initial attack resources in late July," Kirkendall said. "We had additional aviation resources available, helicopters and helicopter crews. We also recruited local contract engines to provide additional initial attack at the district level and brought 20-person crews onto the forest and dispersed them out to the districts to provide additional initial attack resources."

Kirkendall said crews remain at regular staffing conditions and will likely do so into October. While fire bosses don't anticipate any significant lightning any longer, human-caused fires remain a possibility. As a reminder of vigilance even this late in the season, the National Weather Service issued a fire weather watch Monday.

"So we're still kind of dealing with the tail-end of a pretty active season that still has potential," Kirkendall said.

Nationwide, more than 3 million acres burned this year, which is below the 10-year average of 3.9 million acres, Kirkendall said. In the Northern Rocky Mountain region, 3,600 fires burned some 895,000 acres this year, he said.

Comparisons were drawn between 2003 and 2000, but the landmark fire season three summers ago was much more severe, particularly in the hard-hit Bitterroot Valley where more than 300,000 acres burned and 70 structures were destroyed.

"I heard that a lot in the media and a lot of internal talk comparing this to 2000," Kirkendall said. "Some of the larger fires that occurred on some of the other forests (this year) would get up to 20,000 acres, which is a significant event, and I'm not discounting that at all ... but one of the things that we have to bear in mind is that 20,000 acres in 2000 was a good day."

That's because fires grew much larger than that on some days that summer.

Meanwhile, Kirkendall also noted the coordination between multiple firefighting agencies this year, which became especially important with the complexity of so many fires spread out across a large geographic area of the state, he said. Fire managers, Kirkendall said, handle each summer much the same.

"We go into every year anticipating we are going to be as busy as we were this year," he said.

---

Reader's Comments >>

Name:

Email: (optional)

Comments:

Image Verification: (Case sensitive)   

---