Purdy fire grows to 4,000 acres

By SCOTT McMILLION Chronicle Staff Writer

GALLATIN GATEWAY -- The weather gave firefighters a break on the Purdy fire Friday as a new and larger team arrived to take over operations.

The fire was estimated at 4,000 acres late Friday, an increase of 800 acres from the late Thursday estimate.

Most of that increase came in the predawn hours, when a wind shift caused a "blowup" on the fire's eastern front, where it left the timber and blackened a wide expanse of pasture land in the Yankee Creek drainage.

"It probably burned 600 acres between 2 and 3 in the morning," said Tim Hancock, timber officer for the Gallatin National Forest.

That forced the 2 a.m. evacuation of another five homes along Yankee Creek, adding to the 25 homes evacuated Thursday in the upper end of Wilson Creek and in Little Bear Creek.

One privately owned cabin on the upper end of Wilson Creek Road, was destroyed by flames.

Tom Corbin, the incident commander of the fire through Friday, said the main focus is on trying to keep the flames from entering the Cottonwood drainage to the east.

Pre-evacuation notices have been given to people living along the Cottonwood Road from Enders Road to Cottonwood Canyon, along Portnell Road and in Cottonwood Canyon.

Officials also announced that the fire, first reported early Wednesday morning, was caused by lightning and not by humans, as had been suspected at first.

"They found the strike tree," fire information officer Pat McKelvey said, shortly after talking to U.S. Forest Service lawmen.

Lower humidity and temperature, cloud cover and a lack of wind kept burning activity low Friday, a marked contrast to the 3,000-acre blowup on Thursday.

Still, conditions are right for a repeat performance and a Type I firefighting team arrived Friday to begin running the show.

Steve Frye, the incoming incident commander, was still unloading his vehicle Friday afternoon and said he hadn't been thoroughly briefed yet, but speculated that as many as 900 to 1,000 firefighters might be attached to the blaze.

The team could be here for the next couple weeks, he added.

While big fires are unusual this late in the year, they are not unprecedented, he said, "especially when things are as dry as they are."

Officials also are beginning to assess damages.

Hancock said perhaps one-third of the Wilson-Little Bear timber sale have burned up. That sale was proposed to harvest 2 million board feet.

The Forest Service had also begun formal planning of a fuel reduction project in the area, but much of that has burned up.

"We were about two years too late," Hancock said.

A population of westslope cutthroat trout in the West Fork of Wilson Creek, one of only three in the Gallatin River drainage, probably was harmed and may have been lost, Hancock said.

People flocked to the area Thursday to watch the fire's spectacular display of muscle, but there were so many of them that they were interfering with firefighting traffic, said Rob Christie, Gallatin County undersheriff.

To avoid more of such problems, a section of U.S. Highway 191 near the Little Bear Road turnoff is closed to the public, with traffic being detoured through the community of Gallatin Gateway and along the west side of the Gallatin River.

"We're going to keep it up as long as this fire is giving people a show" and causing them to stop for pictures and videos, Christie said at the fire camp Friday. That means "through the weekend and maybe longer, depending on what this fire decides to do with itself."

Most of the national forest land from Cottonwood Creek west to 191, and from the forest's northern boundary to the Squaw Creek Road, have been closed.

For more information, call the fire camp at 763-3246 or the Bozeman District Office of the Gallatin at 522-2520.

Scott McMillion is at scottm@gomontana.com.