Scorched Montana Seeks Disaster Status

Montana’s governor asked President Clinton to declare the state a federal disaster area Tuesday because of its huge wildfires, as exhausted firefighters looked hopefully toward the weekend and the possibility of rain.

Gov. Marc Racicot told Clinton that the state has exhausted its firefighting resources and asked for a federal disaster declaration that would free up more federal money. The governor estimated wildfires are costing Montana businesses $3 million a day.

In a visit to one fire camp near Helena, however, the governor heard a forecast for what would be the first break in the drought that has helped feed the fires.

Cooler temperatures and scattered showers are expected for the Labor Day weekend, said Bob Nester, a National Weather Service forecaster.

“This is the first real weather pattern change in the West for three months,” he told Racicot.

The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, said there were 31 large fires burning on 674,000 acres in Montana on Tuesday. The biggest accounted for almost 250,000 acres after the Valley Complex and the Mussigbrod fires in the Bitterroot Valley burned together.

Nationally, there were 84 fires on 1.6 million acres. Idaho reported 26 large fires on nearly 745,000 acres; Wyoming, five large fires on 52,000 acres; and South Dakota, one 65,000-acre fire.

So far this year, 6.2 million acres in the United States have burned, the center said.

In Idaho, two New Jersey firefighters were injured when a driverless fire tanker rolled over their tent as they were resting between shifts. One man had a broken leg and two broken ribs, and the other had abdominal swelling and neck pain.

It was the first major accident in the firefighting efforts on the 192,400-acre Clear Creek fire, where more than 1,500 men and women have been scraping fire lines for more than a month.

“We’ve had a very long fire season. We’ve got the best firefighters in the world, and we could have had more injuries,” Salmon-Challis National Forest spokesman Jim Payne said.

The weather already is starting to cool in Montana, and fire camps across the state reported their blazes moving slowly if at all because of the favorable weather.

Firefighters and equipment were pouring in Tuesday to attack the Willie fire, which drove 150 families from their homes outside Red Lodge on Sunday. It was about four miles from town Tuesday.

“It’s a very controlled return of the evacuees,” said Carbon County Commissioner Albert Brown. “We know who’s there, how many are there, where they are and what they’re doing.”

Ground crews had been held back from the Willie fire because of the mountainous terrain and the fire’s erratic behavior until Tuesday. Air tankers and helicopters bombarded it with chemical fire retardant and water, and dozens of engines from surrounding volunteer fire departments, bulldozers, and water-tenders joined in.

The area is dotted with summer homes, some of them $1-million estates, and the firefighters’ priority after safety is protection of property.