Ranches in Path
The Beaver Creek Fire is 9 miles from the venerable Nine Quarter Circle dude ranch, where trail rides are a mainstay. Ranchhands moved some horses in from outlying pastures, spokeswoman Kelly Kelsey said, but the dude ranch continued to operate, as did another one nearby.
     Occupants of some working ranches were told they may be advised to leave, but no evacuation orders were issued. The Forest Service banned backpackers from certain areas.
     Yellowstone National Park, which had a few small fires burning, has restrictions on campfires and smoking. Most of Yellowstone is in Wyoming, but a small portion extends into south-central Montana.

Sending in Reinforcements
Sixty-eight Australian firefighters who arrived in Montana today focused their attention on the southwestern area of the state. The Australian embassy said the firefighters are likely to help battle fires through mid-September.
     In Montana’s southwestern corner, the Bitterroot Valley remained a hot spot, with 800 residences remaining evacuated and some homeoweners wondering what to do now that their houses have burned. The Bitterroot Valley fires have destroyed more than 50 homes and charred 111,000 acres. Another Bitterroot fire, in the wilderness complex near Hamilton, Mont., has burned nearly 47,000 acres.
     Soldiers from Fort Hood, Texas, have been called in to help with fires near Missoula, where flames have burned more than 12,000 acres.
     Texas’s firefighting staff got a boost with the arrival on Sunday of a U.S. Army battalion and firefighters from Australia and New Zealand.
     “The positions they’re going to fill on our fires, they’re probably overqualified for,” said Mary Apple of the National Interagency Fire Center. The Australians and New Zealanders will typically oversee teams of two firefighting hand crews, three bulldozers, or five fire engines, Apple said. Such mid-level managers are what the U.S. Forest Service most lacks right now, she said.
     So far this fire season, more than 375,000 acres of Montana have burned — an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. As firefighters continue their ground assault, several C-130 transport planes have been transformed into tankers capable of dropping 2,700 gallons of fire retardant.
     Two of the crafts from Geiger Field in Spokane, Wash., are being used in the Salmon-Challis National Forest to battle the 127,000 acre Clear Creek Fire.
     “We do use it, you know, directly on fires in case of emergency where we have equipment being threatened and life being threatened or structures where we may put it right on top of a structure and keep it from burning,” says base manager Cecil Stinson. “But basically it’s designed to be put ahead of the fire and let the fire run into it.”
     More than 500 National Guard personnel turned out for weekend firefighter training at the Army’s Yakima Training Center in Washington, it was the first weekend mobilization for fire training for the Guard since 1994, the last year the state was considered a wildfire tinderbox.

Casualties and Fatalities
This weekend a helicopter dropping water on a Nevada blaze crashed, killing the pilot. Sunday night’s tragedy was the second deadly fire-related helicopter crash in 10 days. Eight people have died this year fighting wildfires across the country.
     The helicopter was making water drops between the town of Fallon and the Clan Alpine Mountains, where the fire has already consumed 38,000 acres, when it went down, about 100 miles east of Reno. The pilot’s name has not yet been made public.
     In Wyoming, a firefighter was killed Friday after a wind-fueled wildfire engulfed his truck on the Wind River Indian Reservation. Another firefighter was injured.