By CHRIS PETERSON / Hungry Horse News
The Skyland Fire is now the top priority fire in the nation, having zoomed from a few hundred acres just over a week ago to more than 16,000 acres as of press time.
The fire is burning in a swath one to two miles wide and was 11 miles long and growing, just south of Marias Pass, 13 air miles east of Essex.
Save for a couple of trailheads, all of Glacier National Park is open and the fire had not entered the Park or crossed U.S. Highway 2 as of presstime. But the threat to Glacier and Blackfeet homes has made it a top priority.
Firefighters were working hard to keep it from crossing Highway 2, where it could threaten East Glacier. They used burnouts Monday to create breaks.
As winds picked up on Sunday, the fire was sending out embers and starting spot fires a half-mile to a mile away, said Incident Commander Dave LaFave.
Because it was close to Highway 2, the fire closed the road for several hours over the weekend.
Burnouts were set to keep the fire from spilling over the highway.
Escorts were using pilot cars to shuttle traffic up and over the Continental Divide. Those restrictions were lifted Tuesday and the highway was reopened to two-way traffic, with reduced speeds near the fire.
The fire is listed at just five percent contained as it is now about a mile into the Blackfeet Indian Reservation near Dog Gun Lake, about 14 miles northwest of Heart Butte.
Long lines of vehicles waited to get over the road and on Monday a contract truck assigned to the fire rolled over. ALERT picked up one man from the wreck and Three Rivers Ambulance also responded to the scene.
The accident is under investigation.
About 500 personnel are on the fire. Tuesday saw cooler temperatures and higher humidity which helped slow the blaze. The fire is a little different than most — in some areas, particularly near the Skyland Road, it was burning brush under lodgepole trees, but not the trees themselves.
Air tankers were dropping retardant on a ridge on the south end of the fire to try to keep it from burning back toward fire camp at the Middle Fork campground.
The fire was caused by lightning and it was very active on Monday.
LaFave's team is out of Washington state.
A stake camp of about 125 firefighters has been set up in East Glacier. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad has provided three 65,000 gallon water tanker cars and a dipping tank has been set up at Marias Pass to allow helicopters to load water buckets to fight the fire.
The weather is expected to be slightly cooler, but no significant rain is in the forecast for the region, though there is about a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms through the weekend each night, with highs in the 80s and 90s during the day, according to the National Weather Service.