Mild fire season

LAKE COUNTY — Despite warmer temperatures in the post-summer weeks, the beginning of fall Sept. 23 and generally wetter than normal summer weather has fire officials on the brink of declaring the 2010 fire season a done deal. But “don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” several local fire officials warned.

“You never know,” Polson Volunteer Fire Department Chief John Fairchild said. “We’re not out of the woods just yet. We were fighting a fire last Nov. 15. These fire patterns, we can’t say that they’re over with yet.”

The real question may be whether the patterns ever started. Most fire officials, from the Proctor, Dayton, Elmo area (Chief Cliff Volunteer Fire Department) down to Arlee, as well as the Division of Tribal Fire for the Flathead Reservation, said wildland and grass fire numbers were way below average in 2010.

“It was such a late spring and hardly no summer, so people must have gotten out of the mood and burning season went past before they knew what hit ‘em,” Mission Fire Chief Ray Frey said. “We only had nine calls this fire season. That’s about a quarter of an average year because sometimes we’ll go on four grass fire calls in one day.”

The statistics back it up. Despite being prepared for a dry summer and a major fire season, Devlin Lafrombois, CSKT Fire Prevention Information Specialist, said tribal crews responded to 75 fires this summer — less than the average of 110 to 120 they’re used to dealing with.

“We had a big turnout of summer firefighters and we had the resources but we didn’t have any fires that could get very big,” he said. “As much rain as we got this year, brush stayed greener so a lot of fires we did get, we got on top of and they didn’t take off.”

The biggest local blaze this summer, the Cut Off Fire, flared to about 750 acres on Little Bitterroot Road between Ronan and Hot Springs. The West Buffalo Bridge Fire burned 42 acres and reservation wide, about 860 acres burned, Lafrombois said. The tribes single engine air tanker, he said, dropped 70 loads of fire retardant on the blazes. All numbers appeared to be lower than in years past.

Expectations of this summer’s fire season were mixed back in April and May. Low snowpack in the mountains and statewide had officials making dire predictions about a smoky summer. But above average rainfalls into the spring kept the grasses greener, creating a new predicament: longer fuels. That threat never materialized as steady rainfall through the summer months kept everything wet enough to stay fire-free. And few 90-degree plus days meant the heat had a minimal impact on curing fuels.

“The fire season was kind of pitiful; normally there’s a lot more grass fires but this year was pretty pitiful,” Ronan Fire Chief Mark Clary said, noting his department responded to nine grass fires, nine brush fires and three haystack fires, about a quarter of their average calls. “It was a wet year but its goes in cycles. We’ll have another busy year, it’s not too far off.”

While lightning storms were frequent, the heavy rainfall usually accompanying such weather patterns kept the grounds fairly saturated.

“We had two lightning strike fires, two human caused, and one we aren’t sure of,” Chief Cliff Fire Department Chief Andy Learn said of his crew’s fire season. “When it starts raining in the fall, we pretty much count on it being over.”

Fall rains have indeed begun and October 1 marked the first day of open-burn season. The season runs through the fall, but Fairchild warned that those hoping to burn a slash pile should call the national hotline (1-800-225-6779) first to verify satisfactory air quality that day.

While many fires are naturally caused, most officials applauded, and thanked, the public for being cautious while out recreating during the dry summer months. Those actions may have saved the Mission Valley from a smoky summer.

“With the current history of drought we thought we had a real dry one, we thought we’d have big fires once it dried out,” Lafrombois said. “But what we like to do is thank the public for being safe with fire.”

Frey said the mild season was a combination of factors.

“It was a slow wet spring and summer wasn’t all that hot either,” he said. “I guess people are getting smarter and I hope they are getting educated on ways to do this burning without it getting away from them.”