Firefighters Attacking Montana Blaze Again

WEST GLACIER, Mont. —  Firefighters who were forced to the sidelines by dangerous winds returned Tuesday to battle the nation’s largest wildfire, burning on 58,500 acres in and near Glacier National Park, hoping to make up for ground lost a day earlier.

“It’s a good day to fight fires,” Wayne Johnson, a fire information officer, said Tuesday as more than 1,000 firefighters were ordered to resume their efforts to corral the fire. “After what we’ve been dealing with, Mother Nature seems to be giving us a break today.”

Fire bosses on Labor Day grounded their air attack on the blaze and ordered all crews off the fire lines as heavy winds fanned flames and fears of a massive blowup.

But those winds had calmed by Tuesday morning, and authorities made the decision to send crews back in.

“Hopefully we’ll make some progress. Keep the faith,” Bob McKinney, a fire information officer, said as plumes of heavy brown smoke rose from the park.

Incident commander Larry Humphrey said that, while lower winds were a blessing, it would take much more help from nature to extinguish the blaze.

Crews have thrown “all the resources . . . we could logically use” at the Glacier fire, he said. “Rain or snow is what’s going to put this fire out.” Temperatures in the 60s with a 50% chance of rain are forecast for today and Thursday.

About a dozen people in a wooded area west of the park were evacuated to Polebridge, about five miles north, late Monday afternoon as a precaution when winds pushed flames closer to homes, barns and a small store.

So far, those have been the only evacuations, and park officials say the fire has not put a crimp in park visits. It may even have attracted some tourists, said David Eaker, a park spokesman. While specific numbers weren’t available, Eaker said visits to the park over the Labor Day weekend were strong.

“How much of that you can attribute to the fires is hard to say,” he said. “But I think it played quite a big role.”

“People should view this as an opportunity to view a major natural event,” he added.

Park Supt. Suzanne Lewis said there were no immediate plans to close the popular Going-to-the-Sun Road through the park. Lodges and other attractions within the park also remained open.

The lightning-caused fire began Aug. 14 near Whitefish. It has burned about 14,000 acres within the 1 million-acre park, officials said.

Elsewhere in the state, two fires that began Monday afternoon in central Montana’s Little Belt Mountains had burned more than 2,300 acres by Tuesday afternoon.

Nationally, there were 18 major fires burning on more than 171,000 acres, the National Interagency Fire Center reported Tuesday.