BY KAREN BOSSICK

Firefighters are to be commended for their hasty response to the Lake Creek fire, which started on sagebrush and foot-tall grass six miles north of Ketchum Sunday.

And Mother Nature did her part to help, as well, sending between .06 and .09 inch of rain late Monday night and early Tuesday morning plus gobs more on Thursday after a very dry summer.

Through this week Ketchum had received 10.90 inches of rain on the year compared with 17.88 inches average. And, while the Sun Valley area didn’t get the record rainfall Boise got on Monday, nor the flash floods that Twin Falls saw, the rain K-Town got felt like a lot.

The combination of firefighting and rain enabled the Blaine County Sheriff to lift the "Ready" status evacuation level for those living on the east side of the highway from Lake Creek to Eagle Creek at 8 p.m. Thursday night. The U.S. Forest Service Incident Command for the Sawtooth National Recreation Area estimated the Lake Creek Fire to be 89 percent contained at that time. And Sheriff Morgan Ballis recognized that the forecast for the next four days points to cooler weather with rain showers.

The Incident Command said that two areas of heat will burn until a season-ending weather event, such as snow. One is in the upper end of Eagle Creek drainage where six acres sloped over the top of the ridge. It has little potential of movement.

The other is in the northeast Lake Creek Drainage in a steep rocky area. It's contained by several large avalanche shoots, with shale rock and Lake Creek Road below.

The fire will transition to a Type 4 incident on Saturday. Once it transitions into a Type 5 incident, it will remain there until a weather-ending event. There could be smoke in the air until that weather-ending event.

Firefighters have remained hard at work on the Lake Creek Fire, addressing standing hazard trees and active burning still taking place in heavy fuels and stump holes on the northeast side of the fire.

According to Sawtooth National Forest officials, they canvassed a fuel break up the slope from Lake Creek Road to the top of the ridge separating Lake Creek drainage from the Eagle Creek drainage, finding minimal heat. They planned to address the hot spots they found and widen the secured edge on Thursday.

They used heavy equipment to construct water bars across fire lines and disturbed soil to divert surface water and prevent erosion.

They knocked down a dozer berm.

And they continued to ferry smokejumpers to the fire to tackle heat and burning on the canyon’s steep slopes on Wednesday.