Glacier latest U.S. park to burn
Tourists have been evacuated; some structures were lost
A wildfire destroyed structures and forced evacuations Monday from the busiest area of Montana’s Glacier National Park, as officials in California prepared to reopen Yosemite National Park following a two-week closure at the height of the summer season.
Glacier’s Sprague Creek campground was closed and evacuated a day after a fast-moving fire triggered the evacuation of dozens of guests from the historic Lake McDonald Lodge last Sunday night.
Park officials said in a statement that structures on the north end of Lake McDonald were lost, but did not provide details. The fire grew to between 2 square miles and 4 square miles by Monday afternoon.
Crews were expected to stay on scene through the night to protect houses and other structures from the flames.
A second campground and private residences inside the park’s boundary also were evacuated and a 30-mile stretch of the scenic Going-to-the-Sun-Road was closed to traffic. The road, with breathtaking views of the park’s mountainous interior, is a major draw for tourists.
Wildfires flare up regularly at many of the large national parks that dot the U.S. West, often burning in densely forested, backcountry areas where their effects are limited. This year’s blazes threaten to have a magnified impact, coming at the height of the summer tourist season.
“It just completely exploded. Yesterday, we were watching it grow all day and now it’s so smoky you can’t see anything,” said Kyersten Siebenaler with Glacier Outfitters, which rents boats in Apgar, a small community at the south end of the lake.
The outfitting company was trying to help evacuated tourists find places to stay on the east side of the park, where it was not as smoky, Siebenaler said.
More than 400,000 visitors last month passed through the west entrance of Glacier, near McDonald Lake. August is typically just as busy and a protracted shutdown of part of the park could hurt the tourist-driven local economy.
Yosemite was scheduled to reopen today after being largely closed since July 25 because of smoke from fires in remote areas that choked the scenic Yosemite Valley.
The closure caused upheaval for thousands of tourists whose summer trips were cancelled. Visitors were warned to expect limited hours and services as the park returns to normal.
The fire burning in Glacier was one of several started by lightning on Saturday evening. Windy, dry conditions on Sunday caused the blaze to spread rapidly in full view of tourists and people who live and work around Lake McDonald, a 9-mile-long body of water ringed by steep-sided mountains.
Two planes from Canada were brought in to help battle the blaze, but officials said high winds prevented their pilots from flying close enough to the fire to be effective.
The lake was partially closed while the planes scooped up water to drop on the fire, Siebenaler said.