BY KAREN BOSSICK

Expect the closure area around the Wapiti Fire threatening Stanley to be expanded on Wednesday to include Hell Roaring Lake and the Sunbeam Dam area. And don’t expect to see a black containment line, meaning containment, around the fire any time soon.

“This fire is going to be on the landscape for a significant amount of time,” Sawtooth National Recreation Area Ranger Kirk Flanigan told those attending a community meeting in Stanley Sunday night.

Flannigan said that the focus for fighting the 68,000-acre fire is on structure protection, keeping the fire away from homes, businesses and the Boy Scout camp west of Stanley.

Planes have been scooping water out of Redfish Lake to dump on the fire when the smoke’s not too thick. PHOTO: Custer County Sheriff

“We’re not going to chase every spot fire,” he said. “We call it high values at risk. I’m not asking them to go out there and chase every smoke. This is rough nasty country…Think of firefighters as a son and daughter--do I want to put them in a spot where there’s no valued assets at risks, or very limited, and there’s a ton of hazards…snags, rolling boulders?”

Flannigan said he doesn’t plan on closing Redfish Lake, which was closed earlier this year because of the Bench Lake Fire. But he does plan on constructing a new closure following the current Bench Lake closure line down to Hell Roaring and Imogene lakes where it will go west before heading north past Highway 21. It will then turn east toward Bonanza, come down to Sunbeam and then back across.

We don’t want to put a closure in place and have to change it two days later, he said.

The Wapiti Fire became the nation’s top priority this weekend after it grew 20,000 acres in one 24-hour period. Its footprint is now more than 68,000 acres; it is zero contained.

The Wapiti Fire has issued some massive smoke plumes. PHOTO: Custer County Sheriff

The number of firefighters working the fire grew to 522 on Monday.  

The lack of fuel suppression in the forests around Stanley over the years has limited firefighters’ ability to bring the Wapiti Fire under control, said Glen Lewis, fire behavior analyst for the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 1, which assumed command over the weekend. Dead and downed trees on the forest have gotten very dry, as have standing dead trees. There’s very heavy loading in some places and some very dense conifer stands that are very dry.

This makes for very adverse firefighting conditions, regardless of weather conditions, said Lewis. Add very hot, very dry, very windy, such as Central Idaho is experiencing and it’s exponentially worse.

The wind that came through Thursday night and Friday morning pushed spot fires all over the place, he added.

“Now it’s extremely prolific out there… You can never pick up all those spot fires,” he said, adding that firefighters are going to try to create more advantageous conditions by doing backburns to cut the fire off before it reaches valued assets.

The Wapiti Fire was started by lightning two miles southwest of Grandjean on July 24. It burned several cabins in the Grandjean area but seemed to settle in that area until Monday night when it crested the ridge and started heading down into the Stanley Lake area.

On Thursday night and Friday morning wind gusts of 40 to 50 miles per hour caused the fire to explode.

Later Friday night the humidity increased with a hundredth of an inch of rain falling on the area. Winds diminished and cloudy skies and cooler temperatures helped tamp the fire down. But the cloud cover moved out earlier than expected on Sunday, allowing fire activity to pick up, said Jeff Colton, one of 50 incident meteorologists who are deployed to fire sites, flood sites and even the Super Bowl.

Stanley averages a half-inch of rain during August; so far it’s received a quarter inch so it’s been “super dry, said Colton. And no rain is expected the remainder of august.

Winds could gust up to 28 miles per hour today—Tuesday, Aug. 27—before dropping into sustained winds of eight to 14 miles per hour on Wednesday and Thursday. Red Flag Warnings are issued when wind is 25 miles per hour or higher.

Winds will also shift, blowing from the southwest on Tuesday and the northwest on Wednesday, which could cause fire spread and spotting along the east side of the fire.

Humidity will be between 23 percent and 50 percent today before it heads back into teens.

“Dry, dry, dry…I wish I had better news,” said Colton.

The Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 1 is pledging full suppression.

Firefighters are prepping around structures in the subdivisions near Stanley and along Highway 21.  They’re building dozer and hand lines, laying hose and doing some strategic backburns where warranted.

On Sunday night crews burned out along Highway 21 north of Homestead, bringing the fire around Homestead where the fire has come down to dozer features. The backburn created a thick cloud of smoke in Stanley.

Crews are also prepping the Crooked Creek, Iron Creek and Goat Falls communities, providing hoses and sprinkler systems supported with water tanks and pumps. Moving around Iron Creek and turning the fire south before the winds push the fire in a southeasterly direction is the first priority, said Brad Pietruszka, a member of the Rocky Mountain Team.  

Further west they are focusing on the Boy Scout camp and campground where it was expected fire activity would pick up with increased winds.

The fire is slowly backing into the Warm Springs drainage; fire managers are considering backburn operations to bring the fire down to the bottom of the drainage. They’re also assessing where they can push fire into rocks and other natural features to the west if they can’t hold it to Warm Springs Creek.

They’re mopping up around structures and spot fires in the Cow Camp where fire crossed Highway 21. They’re also mopping up in Hanging Valley, Bear Valley and Grandjean.

The fire laid down where they were able to link the fire back into the Halstead fire scar.

“Wednesday we anticipate the winds to the northwest so a whole bunch of doing everything as fast as we can to get control before the wind changes,” said Dan Dallas, incident commander for the Rocky Mountain Team.

Custer County Sheriff Levi Maydole said there is a hard closure of Highway 21 from Stanley to just east of Lowman based on predicted fire behavior. The Red Cross is ready to provide shelter in Challis for evacuees. An evacuation center already has been set up in the Stanley Community Center.

Neighborhoods west of Stanley are currently evacuated. Stanley is in “set” mode, meaning that residents should be ready to go at a moment’s notice. The Stanley Ranger Station is in “ready” mode and would be bumped up to “set” if Stanley is evacuated.

Maydole said he has no plans to evacuate Stanley now but that could change if spot fires begin sparking in town or if the fire should block Highway 75 to the south.

LOWMAN COMMUNITY MEETING

Firefighters will have a community meeting at the Lowman Fire Station at 6 tonight—Tuesday, Aug. 27. They plan to livestream the event and post the recording to https://facebook.com/wapitifireinfo2024.