According to today’s Missoulian:
FRENCHTOWN – A wildfire sparked by a lawnmower northeast of here quickly spread to 720 acres on Thursday afternoon, displacing livestock and prompting authorities to issue evacuation notices to hundreds of homes.
The Mill Creek fire started in tinder-dry grass before blowing up across a ridge into scattered timber and homes. Air support arrived quickly and in force, hitting the fire with water and slurry as evacuees ran for cover.
As of 9 p.m. Thursday, the fire was zero percent contained.
According to Inciweb the fire started around 2pm as the lawnmower apparently hit a rock and sparked. The Missoula airport sits a few miles from the location of the fire and yesterday afternoon the airport reported a high temperature of 97 degrees, relative humidity down to 11% and winds gusting to 23 miles per hour.
Inciweb reports that the fire is burning in grass, brush and timber and around homes. So far, 175 firefighters are on the fire and it looks like helicopters and slurry bombers are also on the the fire. Maps indicate that the fire is burning on State of Montana land and private land and is heading headed Plum Creek Timber Company land and also US Forest Service land. There’s also a chance that this fire will burn into the 2007 Black Cat fire area, as well as some recent Forest Service fuel-reduction projects. No word yet on the taxpayer cost of this human-caused fire. Today’s forecast for Missoula is for sunny skies and a high of 95 degrees.
Matthew.. you keep posting on “human-caused” fires. Do you think they should be suppressed and lightning caused allowed to burn? I’m not sure what your point it. Fire suppression efforts seem to me to be about “keeping fires from doing bad things” which is difficult to relate to “how the fire got started.” What am I missing?
Obviously, Matt is baiting me. Fires will do their damages, whether they are human-caused, or from dry lightning. He’s also pushing the monetary costs of human-caused fires, to vilify people living in the forests. Well, there are millions of people living in wildfire country, and that fact isn’t going to change.
Just a reminder that you cannot take the human impacts out of the forests. Preservationists ignore this fact, bemoaning the human presence and associated impacts, and depicting human being as a “cancer upon the land”. Good luck removing human impacts! We need resilient forests which survive human impacts!! Not fuels-choked forests which teeter on the brink.
The Carpenter Fire appears to be another Let-Burn fire, costing tens of millions of dollars. It has 95% containment but, the expected full containment is August 18th. However, this is the kind of fire that might be worth letting burn, since it is almost completely contained, and it has minimal resources working it. Let’s just hope that it won’t escape.
ALL THE COMMENTS ARE FINE, BUT DID THE COMENTATORS BY ANY CHANCE HELP TO PUT OUT THE FIRE? OR THEY COMMENTED WHAT HAS TO BE DONE BUT BY OTHERS. But this not only happens in wildfires!!! just like the talk a speaker in TED.com
about conctionness a word that will soon replace the word sustanabilty which lets face it has become a marketing word to increase prices ( few exceptions))