Fire crews on high alert
<p>Will Woodger, volunteer fire fighter with Polson Fire Dept., helps to put out a small fire along the bike path in Polson, Saturday evening. Crews are on high alert, as a wet spring and hot summer have made for extreme fire indices across the western side of the reservation and very high to the east (Photo by Ali Bronsdon).</p>
POLSON — The Polson Fire Department put out a small grass fire along the bike path near Hillcrest Drive Saturday night. The cause of the blaze is still under investigation.
“We just don’t know what started it,” Polson Fire Chief John Fairchild said. “It was only about 100-by-50 feet, so it wasn’t real big, but the way it was starting to get up it could have gotten up and running and a few businesses could have been put in danger.”
According to Curtis Matt, fire prevention officer with the CSKT Division of Fire, the tribes implemented a stage I fire restriction to the Flathead River corridor, Aug. 2. It is still in effect, limiting building, maintaining, attending or using a fire or campfire to within a developed recreation site or other approved site; smoking to within an enclosed vehicle or building, a developed recreation site, or a place, at least three feet in diameter, cleared of all flammable material. Off-road vehicle travel is not advised.
“With the early spring rains we had, we’ve got an over-abundance of grass growth, which is dried out now,” Matt said. “People think because we got this rain we’re out of fire danger, but we’re not — that rain really hasn’t helped us a lot — it’s kind of a band-aid, if anything.”
The current fire induce has been elevated to “very high” on the east side of the reservation and “extreme” on the west side of the reservation.
“As of right now, we’ve had more than five human-caused fires, at least two of them started from firearms,” Matt said. “That’s a good indication of how dry it is out there.”
Local fire crews were on high alert last week after a lightning storm passed through the area Sunday night.
“It takes some afternoon sun and for the relative humidity to go down before it picks up,” Fairchild said. “So as soon as we see something, we’ll be gone.”
Call the Division of Fire at 676-2550 or 911 to report a grass or forest fire.