Dozens of already anxious residents of O'Brien Creek, Horseback Ridge and Big Flat were just pulling into a community meeting Tuesday night when their neighbors came streaming out with the news.
High winds had again hit the wildfire that burned three homes and blackened thousands of acres in a wind-driven run Saturday. O'Brien Creek was back on evacuation-warning status. Everyone needed to go home and gather their belongings.
Smoke appeared from dozens of hot spots on the south side of the creek. Here and there, a tree torched. Residents tore up the road, knowing after Saturday's firestorm what wind can do to a wildfire.
This time, though, the wind died down after a half-hour, having been clocked at 43 mph at the heli-pad and more than 50 mph on the ridgeline above. And while the fire growled a bit, all the lines scraped and bulldozed by firefighters in recent days kept the flames in check.
Engines stood watch - one per house - on Cedar Ridge Road for 30 minutes more, until firefighters were sure the danger had passed. Then they turned things over to night-shift lookouts, and residents began another restless night in the mountains west of Missoula.
Tuesday was, in fact, a worrisome day for 131 families in O'Brien Creek, Cedar Ridge and Lyon Creek, all of whom were allowed back in their homes. Time and again, they called the fire camp to report smoke and fire. At nightfall, embers showed through the trees, igniting another flurry of reports.
"That will go on for a while," said Martin Esparza, the fire's lead information officer. "People are going to see embers and smoke and some burning. We are mopping up 150 feet from our lines, but there will be stuff burning for a while inside those lines."
Esparza said the fire's operations chief called for an evacuation warning because the wind sent so much smoke into the canyon that firefighters didn't know what the fire was doing.
"Thank goodness, the smoke didn't bring the fire with it," Esparza said. "And the wind blew the fire right back into the black - just like they wanted it to."
Ground crews and six helicopters worked the Black Mountain fire for 12 hours Tuesday, carving lines against its 6,526-acre perimeter - the acreage revised downward after lookouts were able to get out on the ground and map the fire's extent.
Where islands of green threatened to reignite the fire, firefighters burned out the vegetation. Where hotspots flared in the afternoon sun, helicopters delivered thousand-gallon buckets of water. Wherever there was fire, there were firefighters - 200 more than the previous day, up to 836.
A new fire-management crew arrived on the scene as well, California Incident Management Team 4. They'll take over at 6 p.m. Wednesday, and Mike Dietrich's team will move to the Cherry Creek fire outside Plains.
Steve Parr, a fuels officer for the Sierra National Forest near Fresno, Calif., spent Tuesday getting the lay of the land - and the fire - on Cedar Ridge, where he will take over as supervisor of Division C. All around him, the forest was burned to black sticks.
When the Black Mountain fire blew up Saturday, Cedar Ridge was the hardest hit, particularly on the upper slopes at the top of several steep draws. All three homes burned high on the mountain, one right after another.
Parr watched as two ground crews backfired off a dozer line west of Lyon Gulch.
"Our main concern is the number of homes in the O'Brien drainage below," he said. "If we got a strong downslope wind - which isn't likely - we wouldn't want the fire running down the hill."
The fire was a bit more active Tuesday afternoon, as the humidity dropped to 17 percent and temperatures hit the lower 90s. "You'd expect this," Parr said. "You really kind of want it; you don't want a lot of unburned vegetation in the interior of the fire."
Chris Slate watched from the other side of the ridge, on lookout for the ground crews. A city fire captain in San Luis Obispo, Calif., he said the new management team will concentrate on mopping up miles of smoldering terrain.
"If we left and there were still embers in the canyon, a month from now a big wind could come through and you'd have a fire all over again," he said. "We'll do a good job out on the line."
Tuesday night was the test, said Parr. "See those cumulus clouds? The puffy ones? They'll probably bring a little wind. That'll be the test. If we can get through tonight, we could get a good handle on this fire over the next few days. But we've got to get through the wind."
Reporter Sherry Devlin can be reached at 523-5268 or at sdevlin@missoulian.com
|
 |
 |
Add your comment now! Write your comment in the form below.
(Email address is for verification only. If you'd like to email a story, look for the link above)