The Billings Gazette has a lengthy article with new information about the Davis fire, a prescribed fire on the Helena National Forest in Montana that escaped and burned over 2,000 acres on August 26. An excerpt is below, but check out the entire article.
On the morning of Aug. 26, a 26-person hand crew, nine engines, three water tenders and a helicopter were ready to finish the job. The forecast for Helena called for a high of 94 degrees and warned that a cold front would blow in by Aug. 27, bringing with it gusty winds. The spot forecast for Granite Butte predicted temperatures of 75 to 80 degrees, winds up to 20 mph in the afternoon with gusts to 30 mph and relative humidity of 10 to 15 percent.
“The wind and high temperatures were still decent conditions for what we would consider fire weather,” Schott said. “On that day the relative humidity dropped in some places down to the single digits, which is well below the threshold we typically use for red-flag days.”
Crews continued to arrive at the prescribed fire scene throughout the morning, and the dispatch log doesn’t show when they ignited the fire. However, Greg Archie, who works for the state Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, was working with the Forest Service crews and at the Aug. 26 public meeting recalled that they were “making pretty good headway.”
Then the winds picked up. Embers blew into grasses and trees outside the prescribed burn’s boundary, momentarily unnoticed. Fanned by the wind, they burst into flames and took off running. The prescribed burn was declared a wildfire at 1:13 p.m. Aug. 26.
“We lost 3 acres in a matter of about two minutes, another 10 to 15 acres in the next eight minutes. The fire got up and moved,” Archie told the group gathered that night at the Canyon Creek School. “In no more than an hour, there were more than 100 acres on fire.”
They quickly requested tankers for an air attack. More crews. More engines. Bulldozers. Helicopters. Volunteer firefighters to protect structures only half a mile away.
By Aug. 27, what was now being called the Davis fire was 2,000 acres. It didn’t change much in size after that, and one week and $2.2 million later, the fire was considered to be 100 percent contained.
