MTPR

Prescribed Fire Sending Smoke To Missoula

By • Oct 16, 2019
  • Pile burning operations within the Marshall Woods project area, September 2019.
    Pile burning operations in the same area as this week’s prescribed fire took place last month. Both are part of the Forest Service’s Marshall Woods Restoration Project.
    Montana Public Radio

A prescribed fire in Missoula’s Rattlesnake corridor is sending up plumes of smoke today.

District Fire Manager Jesse Kurpius says the 44-acre fire is dying down, but staff is closely monitoring the burn and extinguishing hot spots. He expects smoke to be visible for the next several days, until the week’s forecast of rain and snow puts out any remaining embers.

Tags: 
Jesse Kurpius
wildfire
Rattlesnake Recreation Area

Related Content

Study Suggests Rethinking How The West Lives With Fire

By • Oct 9, 2019

As fire season winds down, managers are intentionally setting fire to brush piles, slash and even large sections of forests in an effort to prevent out of control wildfires in future seasons. A group of scientists from Montana and Idaho recently published a paper arguing that strategies like these should be part of a radical rethinking of how people in the West live with fire.

Winter Weather Wards Off Prescribed Burns

By • Oct 7, 2019


The Custer Gallatin National Forest Monday postponed several controlled burns in southwest Montana due to an incoming winter storm.

Montana Needs To Fight Fire With Fire, Officials Say

By • Jun 10, 2019
(L to R) Forest Service Fire Scientist Mark Finney, Missoula District Ranger Jennifer Hensiek, Missoula County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier, at a Missoula City Club meeting, focused on wild fire, June 10, 2019.
Edward O'Brien / Montana Public Radio

It’s going to take fire — and a lot of it — to fight wildfire in the Missoula Valley, where it is and always has been part of the landscape. Experts say it’s also going to take more prescribed burning, new levels of government agency coordination and new layers of government regulation to make a difference.

1 Billion Acres At Risk For Catastrophic Wildfires, U.S. Forest Service Warns

By Kirk Siegler • Jun 5, 2019

The chief of the U.S. Forest Service is warning that a billion acres of land across America are at risk of catastrophic wildfires like last fall's deadly Camp Fire that destroyed most of Paradise, Calif.