Wind storm sparks new fires

A potent wind storm that was forecast to sweep across Northwest Montana on Tuesday toppled trees, knocked out power and sparked a handful of new wildfires.

Lincoln Chute, Fire Service Area Manager for the Flathead County Office of Emergency Services, told the Daily Inter Lake that about six fires were burning around Flathead County as of Tuesday evening. Some were sparked by downed power lines, while some began when the embers of recent logging burns were re-ignited by wind. He said that, to his knowledge, no prescribed burns were going on Tuesday.

He said that state, local and federal agencies were deployed to combat the fires, and that aircraft were sent to Foys Lake, Lynch Lake and Twin Creeks near McGregor Lake. The fire at Foys Lake was estimated at 40 acres as of Tuesday evening, while the largest fire north of McGregor was about 100 acres.

“Treat all power lines down as if they’re live,” Chute urged the public, advising residents to report downed lines by calling 911.

In Libby, more than 700 Flathead Electric Cooperative customers were without power Tuesday afternoon after multiple trees fell on power lines in the area.

“[The wind] started early in Libby,” said Wendy Ostrom Price, public relations officer at the cooperative. “We’ve got trees down on lines.”

Trees on power lines were also to blame for widespread outages in the Whitefish area that impacted about 5,000 customers at one point. Customers in the Happy Valley area also were without power.

In Kalispell, about 987 customers were without power at one point. Outages were also reported between Columbia Falls and West Glacier.

In Plains, about 1,300 Northwestern Energy customers were without power Tuesday afternoon.

The Northwest Weather Service issued a wind advisory for the area, forecasting widespread wind speeds of 30 to 50 mph in higher elevations and possibly along the valley floor.

Ostrom Price said cooperative crews were ready to respond as outages happened.

“We’re as ready as we can be,” she said. “The problem with wind is that we have to remove trees and dig through debris before we can fix the problem. That takes awhile. And if a pole comes down, it has to be replaced.”

Ostrom Price said that people should report outages to the cooperative’s call center at 406-751-4449. If the center is experiencing a large volume of reports, a caller may be directed to an automated outage system.

Flathead Electric reminds people to never touch or drive over a downed power line and to report it to the co-op right away.