Windy conditions increase fire danger

LAKE COUNTY — Spring is the time for clearing unwanted brush and grass, but local fire officials are warning residents to take caution where and when they burn.

“It is drier than what you would think with all the precipitation and moisture we’ve had,” Darrell Clairmont, CSKT’s fuels manager, said. “We’ve had a lot of wind, and that dries things out more than you would think.”

Clairmont said that both the tribal fire management office and local fire departments have responded to numerous grass and brush fires throughout the county in the past few weeks, the cause of most being unexpected dry conditions and wind.

“It’s pretty much been people trying to clean up around their house by burning old grass or having slash piles, and the wind is coming up and taking them away,” Clairmont said.

It’s as easy as scanning the forecast, Clairmont noted, to be safe when you’re burning slash piles or dead grass.

“Check the weather and make sure that you’re not going to burn on days where it’s going to be windy, especially in grass,” he said.

Local fire agencies are also carrying out prescribed burns this time of year, the most visible of which was CSKT and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s grass burn by the Ninepipe National Wildlife Refuge adjacent to U.S. Highway 93. Clairmont also said CSKT has done carried out another prescribed burn.

“Those were basically setting up the places we burned for spraying [to eliminate invasive species] and for wildlife habitat.”

Flathead National Forest authorities are overseeing another prescribed burn in the northern Mission Mountains. Smoke from that burn was visible from Polson this week.