For nearly a century, Forest Service firefighters toiled under a policy that every fire discovered in the wilds was to be extinguished before 10 a.m. - the hour considered the start of the next burning cycle.
If firefighters didn't catch the blaze, then it was time to bring in more yellow shirts, helicopters and slurry bombers to do whatever it took to douse the flames before the next 10 a.m. deadline.
But those days are well on their way to being over.
Nowhere has that been more evident than in Stan Benes' fire camp in the Bitterroot Valley this summer.
In a matter of a few weeks, Benes' team would be asked to throw everything they had at one fire, sit back and allow another to burn in the wilderness, and then do their best to steer another away from valuable resources while allowing the fire to do some good in other places.
A firefighting veteran - he went out with his first initial attack team in 1969 - Benes was the incident commander of the fire management team called in to lead the attack on six wildfires that flared up in the Rock Creek drainage of the Bitterroot Mountains on Aug. 3. Dubbed the Rockin' Complex, all of the fires were burning in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness.
The strategy for fighting the fires was already being developed before the team was even called in, said Dave Bull, Bitterroot National Forest supervisor.
Using a process called "appropriate management response," Bull said officials identified five of the six as fires that would benefit the forest if allowed to burn. The evaluation process included consideration of a variety of factors: firefighter safety, potential resource benefits of allowing the fire to burn, and costs of fighting the fire.
The sixth fire was further east and had the potential to move out of the wilderness and potentially threaten recreational development and lands considered part of the suitable timber base. The team decided early on that should the fire move in that direction, they'd need to take action.
Bull knew right from the outset that these fires would require an overhead team. He also knew once those teams arrive on the scene, the cost of managing the fire can quickly jump from $100,000 to $200,000 a day.
"We knew we'd put a team on this, but considering how the fires were burning, we decided we could wait a few days before calling them in," said Bull. "There was no reason to spend taxpayers' money to pay a team to sit and wait."
When the fire finally reached a spot where Bitterroot forest officials had decided they'd need some help, four days had passed.
"Conceivably, we could have spent up to $800,000 at that point and not accomplished anything more than what we'd already done," said Bull.
When Benes' team arrived, they learned that this assignment was going to have a different twist.
"We'd certainly developed a strategy that the team wasn't used to dealing with," Bull said. "We had a fire that if it burned in one direction, there would be some positive resource benefits."
If it burned the other way, it could endanger some developed recreation sites, homes or lands considered suitable for timber harvest.
"We asked them to develop tactics that would keep the fire from putting those values at risk. At the same time, we didn't want them to order in the world to come and put this fire out," Bull said.
That's a change in tactics from the old days. And it's not something that people living nearby will always feel comfortable with.
"In a lot of cases, we're fighting the memory of the last fire," Benes said. "In the Bitterroot this summer, there were people who had been through 2000 and they worried that these fires might get too big."
While Bitterroot residents were keeping a wary eye on the fires burning in the Rockin' Complex, they also had the chance to see how firefighters react when a blaze threatens a community.
Benes' team jumped into action when a fire exploded through dry fuels just across the highway from their fire camp.
The CB Ranch Mutual Aid fire near Darby went from a small initial-attack type fire to 1,800 acres in a matter of hours. As the fire grew, Benes ordered five helicopters into the air and called in retardant drops. Fire crews from his camp scrambled and were soon battling the blaze.
"We threw everything we had at it," Benes said.
It took a few days of hard work for the team to stamp out the fire, but they got the job done.
"That was a full suppression effort," said Bull. "There were way too many values, including private property, some structures and state of Montana forest lands, to allow that fire to burn. We pulled out all stops to get it out."
Just as Benes' team was winding up their efforts on the Rockin' Complex of fires, another blaze ignited just off the Skalkaho Pass Road in heavy timber and steep terrain. The Signal Rock fire was going to present some new challenges for Benes' team.
"It was an area that was heavily forested. There were few safety zones for firefighters and had very poor access," said Bull. "It's a sea of lodgepole and subalpine fir. A lot of it's dead."
It was a place where fire could do some good.
There were also some places where the fire could conceivably threaten other values like private property or places considered as potential timber base.
So the decision was made to guide the fire away from the "other values" places and allow it to burn in places where there would be ecological benefits or the threat to firefighter safety was too great for a direct attack.
That fire continues to burn.
"When you consider the thick fuels and steep terrain, this is a place where we'd probably not beat the season-ending event anyway," said Benes. "We could spend a lot of taxpayer money and jeopardize a lot of young lives trying. This fire was really an in-between thing. It's a challenge to manage and even more of a challenge to try to explain to the public."
"It's also been a pretty interesting experience for some of us old fire dogs," Benes said.
Allowing fire to do its work is certainly less expensive. Where it might cost $100 an acre to manage a "wildfire use" type fire, a full suppression effort can run anywhere from $500 all the way up to $6,000 an acre.
"Unless there are some high values at risk, it's real hard to justify those huge expenses to taxpayers," said Benes.
"One of our biggest challenges is being patient enough to let fire do its good stuff," he said. "We could get real aggressive and bring in helicopters and bombers and before long be spending $1 million a day and still probably not beat the season-ending event on some of these fires."
Firefighter safety is one of the key ingredients officials use in developing strategies for battling blazes.
"Sometimes firefighters feel a bit frustrated when they can't get out and do the job they've been trained for. I don't mind explaining the reasons we do what we do to them or the public," Benes said.
"What I don't want to have to explain is why some young firefighter was put in a position where they were severely injured or worse," he said. "We make every effort to ensure that doesn't happen."
Returning fire to its natural role in the forest could eventually cut down on the huge catastrophic fires that make headlines.
To get a firsthand view of just how that works, a person could take a flight over the complex of up to 44 fires burning in the Selway-Salmon Wildland Fire Use Complex on the Bitterroot and Salmon national forests.
The fires, burning in the Frank Church-River of No Return and Selway-Bitterroot wildernesses, range in size from just over 2,600 acres to less than an acre.
For more than 30 years, the Bitterroot National Forest has allowed fire to burn in the wilderness area. Over time, the fires have created a series of mosaic-like burns that now often serve as a kind of fire break.
"This is really a model of how a fire use program can work and be successful," said fire information officer Punky Moore. "We're seeing these fires burn into older burns. With the return of fire to its more historical form, we don't have to intervene nearly as much."
"This is kind of a unique situation," Moore said. "I don't think that we've ever had this big of a complex managed like this before."
Managing the fires isn't a totally hands-off affair.
Moore said the overhead team constantly evaluates the blazes and decides which ones have the most potential to come out of the wilderness. Contingency plans are made for that potential.
There will always be trade-offs when it comes to managing fire, said Larry Dawson, the Forest Service's regional director of fire, aviation and air.
When fires flare in places where there are high values, like the Interstate 90 fires that threatened homes and power lines near Alberton, firefighters will continue to do everything possible to beat back the flames, Dawson said.
But there are other places where fire is going to be allowed, he said.
"We've come a long ways from the old 10 a.m. wildfire policy," Dawson said. "We have a little more sophisticated Smokey the Bear. We're just making better decisions these days."
Reach reporter Perry Backus at 523-5259 or e-mail pbackus@missoulian.com
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