Team assembles to fight Liberty fire east of Arlee
Crews began to set up camp in Arlee Monday evening after a Type I management team arrived to help fight the Liberty wildfire. (Ashley Fox/Lake County Leader)
Plumes of white smoke could be seen for miles Sunday afternoon after the Liberty hastily grew in size due to wind and hot temperatures.
Concerned citizens filled the Arlee Community Center Monday evening to receive information on the status of the Liberty Fire from CT Camel, Fire Prevention Specialist with the Division of Fire. (Ashley Fox/Lake County Leader)
Extremely dry and breezy conditions over the weekend fanned the Liberty fire that has burned for more than two weeks.
Fire Prevention Specialist C.T. Camel said Monday that there was a meeting held earlier for a Type I management team that will “take over the Liberty fire” Tuesday.
Camel said that as of late Monday morning, officials had knowledge of the fire spanning 1,800 acres. “It made that good push yesterday,” he said, adding “It seems that all the fires (in the area) took off (Sunday).”
Kristen Allison, public information officer for the Type I management team, relayed by email that daily updates regarding the Liberty fire will be posted to the Incident Information System website, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.
To access the Inciweb page, visit https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5437/. The group’s Twitter handle, she said, is @Info_CIIMT1. To see photos posted, visit https://www.flickr.com/photos/ciimtl/
The team’s BlogSpot can be viewed at http://caimtl.blogspot.com/
Camel confirmed that as of Monday, there was zero containment on the Liberty fire.
At approximately 3:30 p.m. Monday, Allison said that there were only evacuation warnings at Seeley Lake and Placid Lake.
The fire is located 17 miles southeast of Arlee, in the South Fork Primitive Area, according to inciweb.nwcg.gov.
Along with the Liberty fire, another blaze has been burning in the Seeley Lake region as well as the Sunrise fire, near Superior
“All of the Lolo fires are from the same lightning storm,” Camel said, which occurred on Saturday, July 15.
There are more than 50 people strategizing to fight the Liberty fire, Camel said.
The team, Allison said, is California Interagency Incident Management Team Type I. It is comprised of federal, state and local agency team members, all gathered to manage the “largest and most complex” wildfires in the nation.
“There are 16 national “Type 1” Incident Management Teams (IMT’s) available for assignment to manage large-scale, complete incidents anywhere in the United States,” she corresponded by email.
While those incidents “usually involve” large wildfires, Type I teams can be assigned to any “complex all-risk” situations, such as hurricanes, floods and other disasters.
The mission of the California Interagency Incident Management Team I, Allison said, “is to safely, effectively, and efficiently manage all incidents” the team is assigned, “by maintaining a skilled and productive team membership.”
Trent Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said that residents in Northwest Montana should expect little change in the forecast over the next week.
Due to what officials call a “back-door cold front,” easterly winds were expected to blow into the area Tuesday night into Wednesday, he said, bringing cooler temperatures “briefly” before hotter, dry weather returns.
According to the National Weather Service, only .03 inches of precipitation has been recorded near the SKQ Dam for the month of July.
On average, precipitation in July is about 1.17 inches.