UPDATE: Rekindled controlled burn caused Montana fire near ski area

Update 5:30 p.m. MDT: 

New maps have updated the West Fork fire perimeter to 400 acres, down from an estimated 700 as of Saturday night.

Seventy people are working on the fire, including crews from Red Lodge Rural 7 and the U.S. Forest Service. Crews determined that the fire threatened 30 structures, although none were damaged or destroyed. There were no evacuations on Sunday and the Red Lodge Mountain ski area was operational on Sunday.

The fire was estimated to be 20 percent contained as of early Sunday evening. In a post on its Facebook page, Red Lodge Fire Rescue said:

“(The) fire was believed to have been rekindled from a controlled burn that was started last (Wednesday), when there was still snow on the ground. Yesterday’s high wind and temperature brought it back.”

fire image

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Original post:

A wildfire a few miles from the southern Montana town of Red Lodge forced a brief evacuation of the local ski area, Red Lodge Mountain, on Saturday afternoon, the Billings-Gazette reported. 

A controlled burn on private land might have ignited the wildfire when it was fanned by winds and spread out of control on Saturday. Incident reports show that fire was human caused, with an investigation on-going. By Saturday night it had burned more than 700 acres.

Officially named the West Fork fire, the blaze has been working its way through timber, grass and sagebrush. The ski area was evacuated around 2:30 p.m. as a precautionary move and to allow fire crews better access, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service told The Associated Press. 

The ski area was closed for a few hours; officials with Red Lodge Mountain said that the area will be open on Sunday.

Conditions at the resort are warm and dry, and it has been more than three days since the area last saw snowfall, according to forecast histories. Snowpack in the Upper Yellowstone basin, where the ski area is, was below average, according to the most recent measurements taken by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The basin’s snowpack came in at 89 percent of normal as of measurements posted on March 29.

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