Bill Harlan, Journal staff | Posted: Monday, June 25, 2007 11:00 pm
|
CUSTER STATE PARK - The
Four-Mile Fire in Custer State Park had burned 2,220 acres but was
65 percent contained by late Tuesday, firefighters said.
"I'm extremely pleased with
our progress today," South Dakota wildland fire coordinator Joe
Lowe said. "If the weather holds, we should have the fire fully
contained by late tomorrow."
The battle had gone well
Tuesday.
Antelope, mule deer and
buffalo continued to graze calmly as a steady stream of fire
traffic ran up and down the Wildlife Loop Road, which was closed to
tourists.
With temperatures peaking at a
relatively cool 70 degrees under gray skies, and with the winds
mostly light, firefighters were able to establish hand lines and
bulldozer lines around parts of the fire.
From above, a small squadron
of aircraft - helicopters and air tankers - dropped fire-retardant
gel on or near the hottest spots.
The fire, named for Four Mile
Draw Road, is in the southwestern quadrant of the park, southeast
of Blue Bell Lodge and northwest of the Buffalo Corrals. The fire
burned on both sides of Wildlife Loop Road, mostly east of S.D.
Highway 87.
The Wildlife Loop and Highway
87 in the fire area remained closed.
No structures had burned as of
late Tuesday, there had been no injuries, and many acres were
singed just enough to clear underbrush.
"Some fire is good," Gov. Mike
Rounds said at the fire headquarters at the Buffalo Corrals, just
before he toured the fire area.
However, timber was destroyed
where the fire burned hot, and much of the park was evacuated,
including Blue Bell Lodge and the French Creek Horse Camp,
interrupting the vacation plans of hundreds of visitors.
The cost of fighting the fire
will be at least hundreds of thousands of dollars. An investigation
into the cause of the fire is under way.
Lowe said the fire was
discovered about 1:15 p.m. Monday during a routine aerial survey
after lightning storms passed through the area.
"It could have been a lot
worse," state fire management officer Jim Strain said, if the smoke
had not been spotted early. A small, single-engine air tanker hit
the fire early, slowing it down.
High winds Monday night,
however, fanned a 500-acre fire to more than 1,500 acres by early
morning.
Gwen Lipp, who worked on the
fire all night Monday as a dozer boss, said the lack of moisture in
Ponderosa pines in the park worried firefighters.
Lipp is a "fuels technician"
with the Hell Canyon Ranger District of the Black Hills National
Forest, which means she's an expert on what wildfires burn. She
said satellite imagery last week showed the "relative greenness" of
the foothills of the southern Black Hills was far below the
average.
After a briefing from
firefighters, Gov. Rounds warned reporters, "If we're going to have
fires in our state, right now it's going to be in the Southern
Hills."
Tuesday night, firefighters
were standing guard near Blue Bell Lodge, but the fire did not
threaten the State Game Lodge, Legion Lake or other facilities in
the northern part of the park.
Some parts of the northern
Black Hills are above average in "green-ness," Lipp said, but fire
danger remains "very high to extreme" throughout much of the Black
Hills region - especially on prairies and in the southern Black
Hills.
And even though cool weather
was predicted Tuesday night, Strain noted that warm and cool
breezes intermingled late Tuesday afternoon, suggesting conflicting
air masses. "Anytime you have that in an area of a fire, it's not
good," he said.
Four Mile Fire on the
Web
For fire information, call the
Great Plains Interagency Joint Information Center in Rapid City at
393-8055. Or the Four Mile Fire site on the Internet at
http://www.inciweb.org.
The Great Plains Interagency Joint Information Center is now
open for the season. The public can call 393-8055 for the latest
fire information or visit the Four Mile Fire on the internet at
http://www.inciweb.org.
Four Mile Fire resources
The Northern Great Plains Type
2 Management Team, based in Rapid City and headed by state wildland
fire coordinator Joe Lowe, is managing the fire.
479 firefighters were battling
the fire by Tuesday.
Their resources
included:
* Three Blackhawk helicopters
of the South Dakota Army National Guard
* A Sikorsky Sky Crane heavy
helicopter
* Two heavy fixed-wing air
tankers
* Three small single-engine
air tankers, similar in size to aerial spray planes
* 34 wildland fire
engines
* Four bulldozers
* 10 water tenders
* Two elite "Type 1" hand
crews: the Tatanka Hot Shots from the Black Hills National Forest
and the San Juan Hot Shots from Colorado
* The Type 2 Black Hats, a
state of South Dakota hand crew that trains year round, and a dozen
other Type 2 crews
* Firefighters and support
personnel from the state of South Dakota, the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the
Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies
* A South Dakota Department of
Corrections hand crew
