Montana News

For the first time this year, the Montana National Guard has been activated to fight a fire in Montana. A Chinook helicopter and its team of 15 were deployed to combat the Meyers fire, 25 miles south of Philipsburg in the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.

Managers of the Sunrise fire east of Superior this morning were worried about it throwing spot fires over Interstate 90 and the Clark Fork River. According to fire team spokesperson Kimberly Nelson, “If there was spotting, the crews caught it because a report never made it back to us, which tells us that it must have been real minor spotting if there was spotting.”

For the first time, more than one million people entered Glacier National Park in a single month. Park officials made the announcement Monday. The crowds are causing park officials to set time limits on some parking spaces, including up at Logan Pass. Next week about 60 parking spaces at the pass will have a one hour limit, aiming to move along the traffic congestion in the Going-to-the-Sun Road corridor.

Montana’s budget to entice tourists to the state is about to take a multimillion dollar hit. Next week, budget reductions triggered by lower than expected state revenue will make Montana less competitive, officials say. Last year, tourists spent about $3.5 billion in Montana, according to the University of Montana’s Institute for Tourism and Recreation .

Montana’s Supreme Court has ordered Attorney General Tim Fox to respond to the American Civil Liberties Union’s complaint about the language of a so-called "bathroom privacy" ballot initiative . On Monday the court gave Fox 20 days to explain why the ballot language his office wrote for the initiative being promoted by the Montana Family Foundation is fair and accurate.

The body of a 29-year-old California firefighter who died in western Montana last week is now back home in California. Twenty-nine year-old Hotshot Brent Witham of Mentone, California died August 2 after he was hit by a falling tree while fighting the Lolo Peak Fire. Firefighters from across the country this morning escorted Witham’s body from the Garden City Funeral Home to the Missoula airport.

Yellowstone National Park has decided to convert part of its bison trap into a temporary brucellosis quarantine facility.

Missoula County Sheriff and Coroner T.J. McDermott released the name of the firefighter who was killed while working on the Lolo Peak Fire yesterday afternoon. The sheriff says 29 year old Brent M. Witham of Mentone, California was killed when a tree was being cut down, and fell on him. Lolo National Forest Spokeswoman Pat York says exact details of Witham’s death are still unclear.

The money set aside to fight wildfires in Montana is rapidly dwindling as portions of the state are in extreme drought conditions. But John Tubbs, Director of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, says there’s more money available to keep up the firefighting efforts, in other pockets of state government. “We don’t run out,” Tubbs says.

Fire activity on the more than 7,200 acre Rice Ridge Fire northwest of Seeley Lake increased today as it burns into heavy stands of beetle killed trees. The evacuation warning is still in effect for residents on both sides of Highway 83 south of Rice Ridge Road to Morrell Creek and south of Cottonwood Lakes Road east of Highway 83, including the town of Seeley Lake and Double Arrow Ranch. No actual evacuations have been ordered.