The Lost Horse Fire 10 miles southwest of Hamilton, Montana is an interesting study in wildland fire behavior and fire suppression tactics. The 40-acre fire is burning in boulder and rock scree fields where the primary method of spreading is through spotting — burning embers traveling hundreds of feet or more and starting new fires in receptive fuels. Some of the patches of vegetation appear to be an acre or more, but most of them are small. The fire is burning on very steep terrain. That fact and the large bounders make it very difficult for firefighters to even walk around in the fire area.
On Saturday three helicopters dropped 72,900 gallons of water on the fire. A large air tanker dropped more than 4,000 gallons of fire retardant on the ridge to try and keep the fire from moving further north.
If you are used to building a fireline to suppress fires, this one already has “firelines” pretty much everywhere — the boulder and rock scree fields that comprise more of the area than the vegetation does.
There is no place for a helicopter to land in the boulders. Rappellers have said they could rappel into the area but there is not much they could do once they are on the ground. So far the only attack has been from helicopters and an air tanker.
Looking at the video below and images from Google Earth, there is more continuous vegetation on the ridge and on the north side, but trying to build fireline where trees grow out of crevices between large rocks would be difficult.
This might be the classic case of needing to back off and find a place from which a burnout could occur, or just try to cool it off from the air to reduce torching and spotting — apparently what they are doing now. If they do nothing but monitor it, it might run out of fuel in a while, or it could be a real pain in the ass for the next four to eight weeks of fire season.
You can keep up with the fire on InciWeb and Facebook.
Black helicopters be damned Dick. If we really want to “manage risk,” we need to stop staffing fires in the goat rocks that are doing nothing but good. Like you, I’ve been on a few of those in the Bitterroot – wastes of money that expose firefighters to enormous risk. While maybe a tough decision politically, it looks like an easy decision, a “no brainer,” ecologically and from a risk management and firefighter safety perspective. Leadership means sometimes you get to make unpopular decisions.
Why not withdraw and observe? Save money and firefighters for other fires. It sounds like the only values at risk there are the ones flying over or prepared to rappell into it.
With all due repects, you’re right on – but you are not a Ranger trying to live in the political Zoo affectionally known as Ravalli County, Montana; remember the “Black Helicopters”? Yep, this is the place. Anything the Feds do or fail to do – regardless on common sense or even “the Law” is roundly criticized by most locals. So, make a good visual show, knowing that your efforts are likely futile. As a neighbor in the adjacent County, I can undeerstand why these actions are taking place, even though as a long-time firefighter, I believe there is a better way – like you suggest!
On the other hand, monitoring would eliminate exposure of pilots and crews. What values are at such risk that the FS has to explain on Inciweb that they cannot dig fireline “through rocks weighing several tons”?
Fires have burned like that on the BRF since I was there in the 1980’s. It just becomes long term management like any other long-duration fire. Interesting to watch the progression and fire behavior as it moves around and over the course of time.
Shades of Carpenter 1 in NV in terms of difficult going in some areas.