Moose Fire Grows As Sweltering Days, Lightning Loom | Local News

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Firefigthers Daniel Burns, Ryan Swarts, Jesus Segura, Scott Ragatz and Brandon Groesbeck dig a defensive perimeter around a shed up Tower Creek Road on July 26. The Great Basin Type-I Team II has been working around the clock near the Idaho-Montana state line as the Moose fire continues to encroach near Highway 93.

Sam Hicks, incident commander of the Great Basin Type-I Team II, leads efforts in fighting the Moose fire near the Idaho-Montana state line. Hicks said an absence of strong winds could keep the fire from growing at a fast pace.

The Moose fire as seen from Tower Creek Road near Salmon. The fire had burned 37,264 acres by Tuesday, according to fire officials.

Salmon resident Kelly Turner, right, and his son Wesley watch Moose fire activity from Bobcat Gulch. Turner said fire activity is a serious concern for him and his family as the Moose fire continues to encroach on Salmon.

Brad Strobel of the unmanned Romeo 31 UAS Module team works from Bobcat Gulch setting up an aerial ignition drone capable to control and put out fires from the air.

Division K Supervisor Sheena Waters helps monitor fire activity up Bobcat Gulch on July 26. Waters’ division oversees firefighting efforts near the east of the Moose fire.

Justin Corkins, a firefighter with the Great Basin Type-I Team II, works installing sprinkler systems and trenches around an evacuated home up Tower Creek Road.

A firefighter with the Great Basin Type-I Team II surveys an evacuated home up Tower Creek Road near Salmon. The evacuation order for Tower Creek Road was put in place on July 22.

Firefighters have been installing sprinkler systems to protect evacuated homes up Tower Creek Road as the Moose fire continues to grow.

Justin Corkins and the rest of a fire crew working for the Great Basin Type-I Team II load their gear onto a pickup. The team has been digging trenches and setting up sprinkler systems around evacuated homes up Tower Creek Road near Salmon.

Greg Nelson fills up a portable tank from a water tanker. The portable tanks holds water for sprinkler systems set up around evacuated home up Tower Creek Road to prevent fire damage on the property.

A K-MAX helicopter carries an empty water tank to fill up from the Salmon River. Aerial efforts to combat have been constant as the Moose fire continues to encroach on Highway 93.

NORTH FORK, IDAHO – With sweltering temperatures looming this week, relatively calm winds could be critical in preventing the Moose fire about 22 miles south of Lost Trail Pass from exploding in size.

But a forecast of dry lightning Thursday and Friday poses a threat.

The fire approached 40,000 acres and was 10% contained on Tuesday as nearly 900 firefighters worked to cut lines around the blaze and protect buildings ahead of the fire. The fire is burning just west of U.S. Highway 93 between Salmon, Idaho, and Lost Trail Pass on the Montana-Idaho line. The blaze ignited mid-afternoon on July 17 and rapidly grew amid high winds and red-flag conditions last week.

The fire is expanding on three fronts — to the west, south and east — driven by chaotic wind patterns through river canyons, up and down slopes, and over ridge tops. The eastern head of the fire threatens the most structures, along the Highway 93 corridor.

Jessica Schick, a public information officer on the fire, said that Highway 93 could be closed “if fire behavior in the corridor presents a danger to the public or our firefighters. It's hard to say how likely it is that could happen because we are dealing with a natural phenomenon that can be very unpredictable.” Information on highway closures is available from the Idaho Department of Transportation.

In the Highway corridor, task force leader Christine Droske was directing crews cutting and burning lines around structures and setting up sprinkler systems fed by portable tanks often referred to as pumpkins because of their round, orange appearance. Nearby, in the Salmon River, helicopters dipped buckets into the river to shuttle water up to the fire.

Droske said she and her crews had assessed 130 residences from Tower Creek to North Fork over the past two days, and that “it’s been a lot more than meets the eye.” Crews working to set up sprinkler systems around homes on Tower Creek Road said it takes about 2–3 hours per home, on average, to erect and test a system before they can move to the next residence. Home sites with multiple buildings take longer.

Some homes were already well prepared for fire, with fuels mostly cleared away from buildings. Others had tall, dry fuels immediately around structures and dry firewood piled high adjacent to dwellings. Around all the homes, hand crews cleared brush and dug lines.

“The east side of the highway, with a few exceptions, is really open and easily defensible,” she said.

Droske, who lives in nearby Salmon, was floating the river just downstream of the fire start on July 17. After 3 p.m., her friend looked upstream toward Moose Creek and North Fork and remarked: “That’s a funny cloud.” It was a plume of smoke from the brand-new Moose fire. Once off the river, she knew she’d be working on the fire the next day: "When I woke up, the wind was rattling the windows of my house in Salmon and I was like, ‘This is not going to be good.’”

Miles Harris, a squad boss trainee on an engine with the Salmon-Challis National Forest, has been working structure protection since July 18. He was on the initial attack of the hours-old fire along Salmon River Road the day before.

“It was road protection at that point … try to keep the heat out of the bottom of the trees so they didn’t come down in the road,” he said. “It went really fast. In the first 10 minutes our IC called it 300 acres and started ordering the world an hour in.”

The fire now has top priority nationwide for air resources. Residents along the highway between Tower Creek and North Fork have been evacuated. Residents from North Fork north to Hughes Creek were advised to be ready to evacuate. The Central Idaho Dispatch Area was in extreme fire danger Tuesday.

An update on Tuesday morning pegged the fire at 37,264 acres and 10% contained, up from 23,320 acres and 0% contained on Friday. As many as 880 people were working the fire, including at least 23 hand crews and 35 engines from around the West, and aided by eight helicopters. Firefighters were also using drones to collect aerial imagery and to drop incendiary “ping-pong balls” to burn out areas that could impede the main fire.

Updated information on the fire’s growth and containment level was not available at press time Tuesday afternoon. An infrared mapping flight was scheduled for Tuesday night to more accurately determine the fire’s size. Updated containment information wasn’t available until each division reported back to Incident Command at the end of the day.

Salmon River Road is partially closed, with a pilot car leading vehicles through the blaze beginning at 6:30 a.m. daily and lasting as long as conditions permit. The fire is burning on both sides of that road. But the road will likely close for a period this week as crews work to lift a crashed helicopter from the Salmon River adjacent the road. The helicopter, a twin-rotor CH-47D "Chinook" helicopter operated by Alaska-basked ROTAK Helicopter Services, crashed around 3:30 p.m on July 21, killing both pilots.

A Type-1 incident management team — the largest and most robust configuration of the interagency teams assigned to oversee wildfire response — took command of the incident at 6 a.m. July 20.

On Tuesday, conditions were calm compared to the prior week, when winds up to 50 mph drove the fire to expand by as much as 12,000 acres in a day. Fire activity this week “depends on how soon the inversion lifts (each day) and what the wind does,” said Deputy Incident Commander Sam Hicks, with Great Basin Type-1 Team 2. Hicks said the area is “notorious” for strong winds, especially in the canyons and along the ridges that border Highway 93.

“Possible dry lightning” Thursday and Friday, and the accompanying winds, could aggravate the fire toward the end of the week. But on Tuesday, Hicks didn’t foresee the same kind of strong winds that spread the fire last week. Whether Highway 93 remains open will depend on the weather and to what degree, if any, the fire spots over the highway to the east, he said.

“This fire has the potential to be here for a while,” he said, noting that Mother Nature “is holding all the cards.”

Firefighting efforts are focused on terrain where conditions and topography favor successful efforts.

“This country is especially difficult to fight fire in because of the terrain,” he said. "It’s steep and it’s hard to access. I think we’ve become wiser over the years about not sending crews into unfavorable terrain where there’s low chances of success.”

On the eastern front of the fire where residents are evacuated, Division K Supervisor Sheena Waters is overseeing operations between Tower Creek and North Fork, “essentially the head of the fire,” she said, spreading generally southeast. Around 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Waters was near the mouth of Bobcat Gulch as a helicopter flew reconnaissance in the gulch to determine if abandoned historic cabins had burned. Smoke was too thick for a helicopter to see, so the crew sent a drone into the area after the helicopter left.

Waters’ primary focus was planning and executing structure protection near the fire front just west of the highway, where the fire reached the Salmon River in some places, and immediately east of the highway, along the road and up Fourth of July Creek and Tower Creek.

“We will not be the division that loses a house six or seven days later,” she said, explaining that crews will continue to monitor private property after the fire front passes to check for fires caused by smoldering embers.