Lower temperatures lift fire crews’ hopes
BOISE – After holding fire lines – “barely hanging on,” as one chief put it – throughout 40 mph wind gusts and broiling temperatures, crews on Idaho’s nation-leading 14 wildfires were optimistic that the worst had passed by Wednesday afternoon.
Across the parched state, wildfire suppression efforts have cost $65 million so far this summer, said Rose Davis of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
“Idaho is in this roller coaster,” she said Wednesday. “It was 96 degrees yesterday and 70 degrees today, and we’re getting 30 mph winds and dry lightning. And then it’s going to heat up again this weekend. We’re going two steps forward and one step back.”
About three miles from Stanley, deep in the needle-peaked Sawtooth Mountains, residents in a cluster of 90 luxurious homes were on standby, ready to evacuate if necessary in advance of the 6.5-square-mile Trailhead fire.
The recently revived blaze was burning at the bottom of a bowl-shaped canyon lined with steep rock. To reach the homes, winds would have to throw embers over the rock walls and onto a ridge of tinder-dry lodgepole pines, said Julie Thomas, a fire information officer for the interagency team battling the blaze.
There was no fire growth Tuesday, on a day of red flag warnings for high wind and severe fire danger across the state. The 374-person team is confident the homes will be spared, Thomas said.
The fire was 50 percent contained with suppression efforts aided by nearly 20 miles of fire hose that’s being stretched to the far reaches of the fire and dousing areas around the subdivisions.
“I want to stress that Stanley is open for business,” Thomas said. “There are just a handful of campgrounds closed and the smoke is not even visible anymore.”
In all, there were 14 large wildfires burning in Idaho across more than 400,000 acres.
The state with the second-most fires was Montana with eight, followed by Washington with six and Oregon and California with five each.
Resources such as engines, helicopters and firefighting teams are stretched thin across the Northern Rockies and Pacific Northwest.
On Friday, the National Interagency Fire Center imported an additional 150 firefighters from Canada, New Zealand and Australia to relieve the nation’s maxed-out corps of public and private fire responders.
Already, 225 firefighters from abroad were serving as midlevel fire managers and on-the-line firefighters, the first time the fire center has called in international reinforcements since 2003, Davis said.
Meanwhile, the cabin village of Yellow Pine in the Payette National Forest remained on alert, a half mile from the southern flank of the Van Meter fire, part of a mosaic of blazes known as the South Fork Complex.
The complex has burned 38 square miles to date at a cost of $8 million to fight.
Fire crews have cut a line around the portion of the Van Meter Fire that had threatened Yellow Pine, and the threat is “largely diminished,” said Mark Van Every, a spokesman for the team battling the blazes.