There have been a bunch of new fires that sprang up over the past week, July 29 -August 6, on the Northern Rocky Coordination Center watch list for Montana. One of the biggest is the Tenmile Fire, which has grown to be Montana’s second largest fire of the year.

“The ten mile fire started on July 31, currently at 525 acres in size. We’ve had two or three days of real good firefighting efforts,” said Fire information officer Tim Engrav. “We actually have 20 percent containment now on this fire. The weather has been real cooperative.”

Engrav says the fire is still about three miles away from homes and other private property.

“We’re about three or four miles away from some communication sites on Pinkham Mountain as well, so we have both communication sites that we’re trying to protect as well as some private property over to the east in the swamp creek area as well as Treego area, those are the closest private lands,” Engrav said.

So far, the biggest fire in Montana was the Reynold’s Creek Fire on the Bitterroot National Forest which was fully contained at just over 1,000 acres. There are two active fires currently burning over at 500 acres: they are the previously mentioned Tenmile fire and the Garden Creek Fire which is burning northwest of the town of Hot Springs.

 

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