Firefighters headed home

The Eagle Creek Fire in the Bear Paw Mountains appears to be fairly well under control, with the resources deployed to fight the fire headed home at the end of shift today, Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation Montana Forest Action Plan Project Manager Wyatt Frampton said this morning.

Frampton said the fire is 95 percent contained, and although local firefighters will be keeping a close eye on it, the main job of firefighting is done.

The incident commander as of last Tuesday, Robert Smith, said it was likely to smoulder and be putting out smoke until a heavy snow or a week of solid rain occurs.

Firefighters at the site included from U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, Bureau Of Indian Affairs Forestry, Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, Fish, Wildlife and Parks, The Chippewa Cree Tribe, multiple volunteer fire departments and Havre Fire Department.

Two fixed-wing airplanes and two helicopters responded to the fire, as well as heavy equipment on the ground. Local landowners also helped extensively with the firefighting, particularly in the first few days.

The fire has been listed at 7,225 acres since Sunday, Sept. 11.

Some restrictions due to the fire are being lifted, but others, at least partially due to the fire, have been put in place.

Beaver Creek Park announced last week that the camping restrictions it put in place due to East Fork Fire are being lifted, but a campfire ban did go into effect today.

Beaver Creek restricted overnight camping south of Taylor Road due to the fire, but has lifted that restriction.

At the same time, Hill County Commission, at the request of local firefighting agencies, implemented a Stage 1 fire restriction including a ban on fires effective at 12:01 a.m. Friday.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the City of Havre mirrored that ban effective Friday.

The park had put out a warning of potential evacuations, but those never were implemented. The fire, discovered the afternoon of Sept. 7 on or near Baldy on the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation, never did push onto Beaver Creek Park, instead pushing south and mostly east and west on tribal, private and state and federal land.

Hill County Disaster and Emergency Services Coordinator Amanda Frickel said last week that Rocky Boy did some evacuations of the Sandy Creek area of the reservation on the first day of the fire.

The InciWeb fire reporting website in the last post on the site, Friday, continued to say only emergency and local traffic was allowed on Beaver Creek Road south of Bear Paw Lake, aka Second Lake.

The fire exploded in the first day, growing to an estimated 2,000 acres by the morning of Sept. 8, then to more than 7,000 acres by that afternoon.