In Google Earth, look at Lolo Peak from due west. Notice heavy timber and a straight, long, slender, green colored stripe below Lolo Peak. Follow it, zoom in and you’ll see that it’s Meadow Creek.
Looks like the fire originated on the south slope of lower Meadow Creek, at about 5,000’ elevation following a lightning strike around 2:34 p.m. on 7/15/17. Likely it was very dry and warm and no rain since 6/21. USFS fire management likely evaluated moisture content of 1,000 hour tree fuels, day and night temperatures, humidity, fire spread rates, and then modeled two weeks of possible forward spread.
Go to the InciWeb night flight infrared image of 7/17 posted on 7/18. Get there by selecting MAPS on the Lolo Peak Fire InciWeb home page. See with your own eyes an image of 59 acres radiating a lot of heat, about 3,000 feet east of the South Fork of Lolo Creek. That image superimposed on a Google Earth photo.
Look at successful infrared images and consider local observations of how the fire could have been not suppressed or contained, but extinguished, in July. Early on the fire was accessed by Elk Meadows road.
Look at the big picture in red and bright greens on current Interactive IR images on the home page of Lolo Peak Active Fire. What a wonderful graphic! Sure would be great if a group would support publishing it in the Bitterroot Star.
Get motivated. Get well beyond map mentality.
Look at Google Earth images of 84 square miles of terrain variously scarred by the Lolo Peak Fire. Terrain where now there is a burn scar over Lantern Ridge. Lots of burn scar terrain in the Mill Creek drainage. Burn scar mosaic in the Mormon Peak drainage.
During a day plus, the fire raced easterly six miles along and past the wide Carlton Ridge, then started to creep south into the Carlton Creek drainage. The fire scarred the Carlton drainage, went up and across the very broad ridge and eventually scarred the One Horse drainage. Eventually the fire went up over the next very broad ridge and scarred the north slope above the North Fork of Sweeney Creek.
USFS fire management completed large precautionary forward burnouts toward, also in the bottom of, the lower Bass Creek drainage.
In total, lots of terrain, watershed, critters, habitat and merchantable timber burned up.
Time to add up obvious Lolo Peak Fire losses plus direct and indirect costs impacting local people.
• Some real estate evaluations will drop.
• Add in loss of improved private property.
• Add in expenses loaded on income and resources of reportedly 1,250 people who had to be evacuated for how long.
• How many people were warned to be ready for how long for possible mandatory evacuation?
• How many person days were spent as evacuated by residents of Missoula County and Ravalli County.
• How many people got hit with fire related reduced incomes because of evacuation warnings, orders, road closures, and not being able to work outside.
• How many people got hit with fire related health and medical problems? Do we see them as neighbors? Do we not see them as neighbors?
• Could local clinics estimate fire-related health care allergy and asthma costs?
• Maybe medical communities and county health people could estimate near term health cost expenses from residents exposed to weeks of local wildfire smoke.
• We did not know fine particulates from the Lolo Peak Fire would get into our airways and lungs.
• I, for one, did not know ultrafine particulates would get into our blood.
• I wonder how much 2.5 micron particulate matter got trapped by filters on school ventilation equipment.
From what I’ve gathered, we people best get involved with issues involving fire management.
Prompt, full attack on local forest fires modeled to impact people, may be the most overlooked, but most important, wildland firefighting objective for 2018.
Please read that sentence twice.
Please remember tax revenues pay to base a Hotshot Crew in both Darby and Hamilton. And Smokejumpers, also Rappellers, in Missoula.
Like others, I’m hoping Missoula and Ravalli Counties start planning for future wildfires and promptly evaluate how much the Lolo Peak Fire has burdened neighbors with heavy costs and losses.
For instance, how much has been expended by County Fire and Sheriff Departments, in response to the Lolo Peak Fire?
How much will be expended to mitigate against flood damages?
Time to inform the public with need to know information about all costs and losses related to the Lolo Peak Fire where fire suppression and containment cost perhaps $50 million.
Who knows how much additional cost to counties, MT-DNRC, MT National Guard, and local residents?
If total costs came in at $60 million, that works out to about $1,100 for every average acre in the nearly 54,000-acre Lolo Peak Fire. $1100 paid for mostly by taxes, but also by local people.
Time to communicate such numbers and findings to us people.
Also to Governor Bullock to present to FEMA.
Total local losses and costs of the Lolo Peak Fire are critical to refer to, when we and others request, even demand, that USFS does not fight local 2018 forest fire outbreaks too late and too expensive.
Bob Williams
Stevensville