The Associated Press
BIG TIMBER, Mont. — Heavy smoke has slowed firefighters battling a 280-square-mile wildfire and also prompted air-quality warnings for much of western Montana.
A small fleet of helicopters and airplanes, which has been dumping tens of thousands of gallons of water and fire retardant each day, was briefly pulled off the fire Tuesday because officials were concerned about flying in low visibility, said fire information officer David Daniels.
“We’re in an inversion, and the smoke is incredibly thick,” Daniels said.
The firefighting aircraft were back on duty by late afternoon. For the first time since the fire began two weeks ago, the blaze had not grown significantly in the past 24 hours, which Daniels credited to “outstanding work” by fire crews.
The state Department of Environmental Quality said air quality in Bozeman and in the fire area was “very unhealthy.” Some high school sports teams and gym classes were called off or brought indoors.
The estimated range of the fire, which has destroyed 26 homes and 20 other buildings, remained at 180,000 acres, or more than 280 square miles. The lightning-sparked blaze had been spreading mostly to the east and the north before a wind shift last week sent firefighters and equipment scrambling back to the fire’s western edge.
About 265 homes were evacuated Sunday night on the western flank, although Daniels said firefighters appeared to have prevented any homes from being damaged.
About 840 people who were evacuated from homes earlier along the eastern edge of the fire were allowed to return late Monday, but most of those evacuated along the western edge were not yet being allowed to come back, fire officials said.
Fire managers remained concerned about the potential for the fire to cross into the Boulder River drainage, a popular recreation area that is also home to large, private ranches and vacation homes.
More than 3,300 firefighters were assigned to Washington state’s 10 largest fires, which have blackened nearly 468 square miles.
Washington’s largest burn, northeast of Winthrop, had covered more than 161,000 acres, or about 251 square miles, and was 56 percent contained.
That fire was within a mile of the Canadian border, and a separate, 32,000-acre fire had already crossed the border into British Columbia, about 125 miles east of Vancouver. An evacuation alert was issued to an undetermined number of residents “to get people ready ... in case they do have to leave on short notice,” said Mary Ann Leach of the Kamloops Fire Center in British Columbia.
Elsewhere, Nevada fire officials were hampered by a lack of resources in their battle against a new round of wildfires that had blackened more than 117,000 acres, or 183 square miles, of rangeland in the northeast part of the state. Dry lightning touched off up to two dozen new blazes Sunday and Monday across the region, fire information officer June McMillen said from Elko.
In Southern California, a wildfire spread across 1,640 acres of brush in steep, rugged terrain in the Los Padres National Forest on Tuesday night, a day after prompting hundreds of campers and fishermen to evacuate a nearby recreation area. No homes or other structures were threatened.
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On the Net:
Incident Information System: http://www.inciweb.org/
Nat’l Interagency Fire Center: http://www.nifc.gov/