Firefighters Hope Not To Lose Cool

Firefighters are hoping a second day of cooler weather will help them make up ground lost over the weekend when wind-fed wildfires burned two houses and forced the evacuation of 250 people.

Firefighters said they managed to save 100 homes in Saturday's blowup of a fire west of Missoula by spraying them with foam, a last-ditch effort to keep back the fast-moving blaze.

"We thought we had hours or days to deal with this — it was not hours, it was minutes," said Missoula firefighter Jess Mickelson of the fire that traveled three miles in two hours and threw flames 400 to 500 feet in the air. "I was awe-struck by the energy this fire exhibited."

Cooler weather and higher humidity Sunday helped firefighters as they started rebuilding lost fire lines.

"Hopefully the results will be that we gained some containment, because we lost everything yesterday," fire information officer Gil Sanchez said Sunday evening.

About 180 families that fled the wildfire's surge south of Missoula returned to their homes Sunday, but about 70 remained under mandatory evacuation orders.

The fire grew almost 6,000 acres, to more than 7,316 acres, in its Saturday blowup. Fire managers estimated the fire itself generated winds up to 55 mph, while area winds were about 25 mph.

The state had 57 fires start in the 24 hours from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday, said Julena Campbell, fire information officer for the Northern Rockies region. Those totaled more than 47,600 acres. There are already a few dozen large fires burning in the state on almost 250,000 acres.

Firefighters found themselves fighting one large fire instead of five smaller ones on the Cooney Creek complex Sunday.

Winds from a storm front moving through late Saturday pushed the fire to nearly 15,000 acres — about 7,000 acres larger than it was Saturday morning.

Crews concentrated on structure protection in Upper Miller Creek Sunday and cut dozer and hand lines to prepare for a burnout to protect scattered homes in the upper portion of the drainage.

Missoula County Sheriff's deputies had evacuated residents in Schwartz Creek and Gilbert Creek areas about a mile from Clinton because of the blowup on the Cooney Creek complex.

The news was better on other fire fronts around the state.

All 50 miles of Glacier National Park's Going-to-the-Sun Road reopened Sunday to a "steady stream of traffic," said park spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt. A section of the road had closed after a 42,900-acre fire jumped a fire line.

Farther south, in Condon, firefighters said they had contained the eastern flank of a 9,475-acre fire. That fire has forced evacuation of about two dozen homes; about 300 other families were warned that they may have to evacuate soon.

Fires in the Bitterroot National Forest of extreme western Montana also closed a 100-mile stretch of U.S. 12 southwest of Missoula into Lowell, Idaho. The road was reopened by Sunday morning.

By Dan D'Ambrosio