Watch a video about Wildfire Awareness WeekA hot-air balloon shaped like Smokey's head floated up from Fort Missoula, while a firefighter donned a Smokey costume to mingle with 200 schoolchildren during daylong activities on the grounds of the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula.
Smokey Bear, who is part of a public service campaign created in 1944, has told generations of children to be fire-wise, including dousing campfires and avoiding playing with matches.
Children who attended the event stopped at a dozen booths where firefighters talked about the tools of their trade, including fire trucks, helicopters, pulaskis and smokejumper parachutes.
“The idea is to help the kids learn more about human-caused fires and how to prevent them,” said Jamie Kirby, a spokeswoman for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.
The U.S. Forest Service used to extinguish all fires as soon as possible, but that policy started to change in the 1970s when agency officials realized that excluding all wildfires creates unhealthy forests.
Today, the agency extinguishes human-caused fires and natural fires that threaten people, property and infrastructure, but some remote lightning-caused fires are allowed to burn as a natural part of the ecosystem.
Wildfires have become more destructive, costly and difficult to manage across the West in recent years as more people build homes in once-remote forests that are overcrowded with fuels.
Most human-caused wildfires in Montana result from debris burns that get away, and from abandoned campfires.
The Smokey hot-air balloon was scheduled to make five stops across Montana this week, but weather and logistical problems may limit the balloon's appearance to Missoula.
The balloon is part of a public-private partnership that includes the Forest Service, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the DNRC and other groups.
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