Firefighters Brace for High Winds in Yellowstone Park

Firefighters and equipment were redistributed Friday to prepare for high wind with gusts forecast up to 60 m.p.h., while forest fires kept two small towns evacuated and the oldest national park mostly closed to visitors.

U.S. Forest Service official Brian H. Avery said the weekend could be the worst ever. “We’re trying to prepare for that today, because tomorrow will be too late to prepare for it,” he said.

Elsewhere, a firefighter died while battling a blaze that doubled overnight to 27,500 acres in Montana’s Glacier National Park. A burning tree fell on him.

That fire had destroyed 15 homes and dozens of outbuildings and burned structures at two ranger stations, a bridge and several historic cabins.

Meteorologists had been predicting that an advancing weather front would produce extremely high winds over the weekend in Yellowstone but might also bring some rain or snow by Monday.

A revised forecast Friday no longer anticipated any rain or snow, Avery said at a briefing on fire conditions.

“We see no direct relief in sight and we are anticipating major fire activity,” Avery said, adding that “probably in excess of 150,000 acres” could be burned by wind-whipped flames.

Emphasis shifted from the Old Faithful complex, which should be “in reasonably good condition” because Wednesday’s firestorm burned an area around the perimeter that should provide a buffer against any further major burning there, Avery said.

The 263,000-acre Clover Mist fire “is our No. 1 priority currently,” Avery said. By Friday it had burned more than in the northeast quadrant of the park and the adjacent Shoshone National Forest.

“We’re looking at (fire danger to) a lot of structures in the Clark’s Fork of the Yellowstone River and also in Sunlight Basin, Sunlight Creek,” he said. “Many ranches and a few lodges down there are going to need some additional protective measures.”

Thirteen fires had burned almost 1.2 million acres as of Friday in the Greater Yellowstone area, 11.5 million acres of national parks and forests in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. In the 2.2 million-acre Yellowstone park itself, 816,225 acres have been burned.

Fires also burned Friday in Alaska, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Washington.

So far this year, 68,396 fires in the West have burned 3,799,550 acres, including about 2 million acres in Alaska, in what federal officials have called the worst fire season in 30 years. Last year on the same date, 49,492 fires were reported that charred 1,272,412 acres, according to the Boise Interagency Fire Center, which coordinates the fighting of forest fires in the West.

The fire center has said more than 25,000 firefighters were at work, but spokesman Arnold Hartigan said Friday that number could easily stretch to 30,000 with military and support personnel.

Secretary of Agriculture Richard Lyng, Interior Secretary Donald Hodel and Undersecretary of Defense William Howard Taft IV were to arrive in Yellowstone over the weekend to inspect conditions.

Lyng, Hodell and Taft are to visit Old Faithful geyser, where a firestorm destroyed 17 buildings, and to fly over the towns of Cooke City and Silver Gate, Mont., at the northeast corner of the park.

Residents of Cooke City and Silver Gate, who were among 150 people evacuated Tuesday, were told to leave again Thursday night because of the danger of the approaching 81,400-acre Storm Creek fire.

“We’re back into another critical situation,” fire information officer Bob McHugh said Friday.

The drain of battling the fire began to take its toll on firefighters, said Nick Tafoya, another information officer. “A lot of crews are quitting because they’re tired, fatigued,” he said, but he had no figures on how many crews were affected.

Yellowstone’s north and west entrances were open Friday, but the only attraction at the west gate was fishing on the Madison River, said park spokeswoman Robbie Brockwehl.

Elsewhere, the Forest Service prepared a weekend assault on an eastern Utah blaze that had blackened 12,000 acres of Ashley National Forest and destroyed five homes and cabins. An estimated 50 families had been evacuated, officials said.

Oregon’s Department of Forestry barred the public from nearly 1 million acres of forest because of extreme fire danger, bringing to 9.5 million acres the amount of state, private and federal land closed in Oregon. Last year, 10.3 million acres were closed.

Near Entiat, Wash., firefighters made a stand on a road Friday hoping to stop the 37,000-acre Dinkleman Fire from burning into a series of four narrow canyons containing homes, ranches and livestock, said Forest Service spokeswoman Marti Ames. The fire has destroyed critical winter range for mule deer and bighorn sheep, officials said.