Crews battling 14 fires around the state

BOISE – Two wildfires that prompted the evacuations of two tiny towns in southwest Idaho and northern Nevada combined Saturday to form a 600-square-mile blaze called the Murphy Complex.

Firefighters, aided by air tankers and helicopters, were trying to protect some 60 homes, 20 commercial buildings and 35 outbuildings in the sparsely populated area around Murphy Hot Springs, Idaho, and Jarbidge, Nev., said Brock Astle of the Bureau of Land Management. “With the erratic winds and that sort of stuff, they’re doing the best they can,” he said.

The lightning-caused fire, burning mostly grass and sagebrush, was about 15 percent contained, he said. Two firefighters were treated at a hospital and released after one bruised his abdomen and another sprained his ankle.

Elsewhere, firefighters battled the lightning-started Chimney Complex about 20 miles south of Lewiston. A mandatory evacuation order was issued late Friday for residents of about 150 homes.

Flames jumped a stream and were burning about two miles from the homes in the Waha Lake and Redbird Road areas, information officer Jennifer Costich said. But crews Saturday managed to build a line around that part of the fire, she said.

“We’re feeling a lot better about it,” she said. “It is extremely tough conditions.”

She said 427 people were working on the fire, with five helicopters assigned to the blaze with help from air tankers.

In all, 14 large fires burning in Idaho on Saturday had consumed about 935 square miles, the National Interagency Fire Center reported.

“We’ve got all different kinds of fires going on in Idaho,” spokesman Ken Frederick said. “Timber fires, brush fires, grass fires, and we’ve got fires all over the state, too.”

Montana

Overnight rain helped crews close in Saturday on a 570-acre wildfire threatening as many as 100 structures north of Wolf Creek, but hot, dry weather elsewhere led to the growth of other blazes.

“The rain did help a lot,” said Mike Cole, spokesman for the incident management team fighting the blaze. “They’re trying to tighten the noose around that fire since the rain got on it, putting a fire line around a smaller perimeter.”

Residents of about 70 homes were still evacuated, but containment of the Little Wolf Creek fire stood at 30 percent Saturday and crews hoped to gain more ground today despite continued hot temperatures, officials said.

Attention was expected to turn today to the Novak fire, which has grown to 617 acres, is not contained and is burning in more challenging terrain, Cole said. It also is threatening several structures.

In the Little Belt Mountains, the Rugby Creek fire ballooned to about 100 acres in 24 hours, threatening about 20 vacant vacation homes and forcing temporary road and trail closures in the Lewis and Clark National Forest.

The blaze about 16 miles southwest of Monarch was actively burning in heavy fuels, said Tina Lanier, a ranger in the Belt Creek District.

“This fire has the potential to burn extremely hot and active, and that’s why we’ve made the decision at this time to not put any firefighters on the ground, but we have made several retardant drops to help slow the fire down,” she said.

In Yellowstone National Park, a fire sparked by lightning in the park’s northwest corner doubled in size to 60 acres.

The Owl fire was discovered Friday afternoon in an old lodgepole forest west of an area that burned in 1988. It was burning north of the Wyoming state line and about three miles from U.S. 191, but threatening no structures, officials said.