The fires of 1988 are nationally known for the infernos that burned 795,000 acres - nearly one-third - of Yellowstone National Park.

But closer to home, long-time Lewis and Clark County residents remember 1988 as the year the 247,000-acre Canyon Creek Fire ran out of the Scapegoat Wilderness and threatened the town of Augusta, and the 47,000-acre Warm Springs Creek fire that consumed 14 structures in the Elkhorn Mountains.

It also was the year Sonny Stiger saw fires behave in ways that he'd never experienced in his previous 30 years with the U.S. Forest Service.

"I started in this business in 1958, on a seasonal fire crew," Stiger, now a fire behavior analyst, recalled recently. "We didn't have the fuels (trees) back then, because this country had been burned over at the turn of the century, and the forests were relatively fireproof; the lodgepoles were young and there wasn't a lot of fuel on the ground.

"Then the lodgepoles matured, the trees got diseases and bugs, and Mother Nature said, 'It's time.' "

The Canyon Creek Fire was ignited by lightning on June 25, 1988, in the Scapegoat Wilderness Area on the Lolo National Forest, northeast of Lincoln. It fell under the Forest Service's so-called "let burn" policy, which was part of the fire management plan authored by Stiger for the Scapegoat and Bob Marshall wilderness areas prior to the 1988 blazes.

"The ERC's (energy release components, a measure of fuel moisture) were at the right levels, except when you look back at the records, the precipitation in the winter was about 56 percent of normal, which should have raised an eyebrow at the time," Stiger said.

But the official plans and policies recognized that wildfires can play a positive role in forest health by weeding out small trees and bushes, while aiding the rebirth of species like lodgepole pines, whose cones open after fires. In addition, fires burn in "mosaic" patterns, leaving different ages of trees in different locales. So if there were no structures nearby needing protection and conditions were right, decisions were made to let fires act naturally in wilderness areas.

Besides, all eyes were farther south, where full suppression was called for on July 21 for the seven fires burning in Yellowstone. Stiger recalls that they couldn't get any equipment for the Canyon Creek Fire, but that didn't concern many people.

"A group met in Lincoln and asked what the next steps should be. Everyone thought it was going to rain soon, so no one worried about it," Stiger said.

But their troubles were just beginning.

On Aug. 9, a Jeep Wagoneer with a faulty exhaust system sparked a fire near a ranch on Strawberry Butte south of Montana City. Nine days later, the Warm Springs Creek Fire had consumed 17,000 acres plus 11 cabins and homes, and people in Winston were getting ready to evacuate.

The fire blew back on itself, heading once again toward the Saddle Mountain Estate subdivision. By its 12th day, the wind-driven Warm Springs Creek Fire was 29,000 acres and the top priority in the nation.

Three weeks after it started, with a total of 14 structures burned, fire officials said the 47,000-acre Warm Springs Creek Fire was just about under control and they began to release some of the crews.

That same day, Aug. 23, a small news story in the Independent Record added that the Canyon Creek Fire had grown to 34,000 acres. A crew of about 20 firefighters was trying to keep the blaze within the boundaries of the Scapegoat Wilderness.

On Sept. 6, a dry cold front with winds gusting to 50 mph blew the Canyon Creek Fire out of the wilderness and out of control, forcing evacuations and the closure of 75 miles of Highway 287. That night, what had been a 66,000-acre fire consumed at least another 120,000 acres.

Stiger was the fire management officer on the blaze and had wanted crews on it earlier, before the fire crossed the Continental Divide. "But all of our resources were at Yellowstone and other places where homes were threatened," he said. "We called it a good decision gone bad. I guess you live and learn."

On the eastern edge of the fire, the winds whipped flames to within six miles of Augusta. About 60 head of cattle died in the fire and four structures burned.

The Canyon Creek Fire created a lot of ill will toward the Forest Service, noted Corlene Martin of Choteau, who was a camp cook during the summer of 1988 for outfitters in the area.

"There was a lot of frustration that it was out of your hands, and it became very emotional," said Martin, who is now a Choteau city council member. "It really took a long time for the locals to start trusting the Forest Service again."

More than 1,300 firefighters descended onto the Rocky Mountain Front, along with the accompanying equipment. Just as important, rain and five inches of snow fell on Sept. 11, marking the beginning of the end of the 247,000-acre Canyon Creek Fire, as well as the 50,000-acre Gates Park Fire northwest of Gibson Reservoir.

Stiger called 1988 a baseline year against which he compares other fires.

In the months after the fires of 1988, numerous reports looked into what was done and what should have been done, and lessons were learned, he noted.

Fighting wildfires has evolved with the use of computer models that can show where fires are likely to spread. More planes spread chemical retardant, bigger and faster helicopters drop more buckets of water quicker, and more volunteer fire departments have new engines and tankers. Communication among various agencies is the best it's ever been, and wildfires are a billion-dollar industry.

Those evolutions help fire fighters catch most blazes - around 95 percent -while they're less than five acres in size. But Stiger added that once a fire does get going, humans aren't able to suppress it much better than we did 20 years ago. Last year, the Ahorn, Skyland and Fool Creek fires ran through 155,000 acres in the wilderness areas on the Rocky Mountain Front near what burned in 1988, and despite spending $41 million on retardants, crews and other firefighting measures, they were extinguished by rain and snow, not people.

"There's only a certain amount of suppression you can do," Stiger said. "We've done tabletop exercises (with the Forest Service, Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and volunteer firefighters) on a real-time basis, and find the only thing we have time to do is evacuate people in the bad years, on hot summer days. That's what we are gearing up to do.

"I don't care how may air tankers and helicopters we have or what kind of command structure we use. Mother Nature rules. I don't think we can fight large fires any better today than we could in 1988."

Race against time and flame

By EVE BYRON - Independent Record - 07/06/08

Editor's note: There were many tales of bravery during the fires of 1988. But ask anyone who was involved in fighting the fires around Helena, and chances are you'll hear about Jerry Burns' ride into the fire. He recently recounted the tale.

Jerry Burns of Lincoln worked for the Forest Service in 1988, and vividly recalls the Sept. 6 Canyon Creek Fire blowup.

While they were well aware of the fire, he said, the USFS had sent a three-person crew with mules and horses into the wilderness earlier that summer to build trail near the middle fork of Landers Creek.

"We had been dealing with the fire back there all summer long, and at that time it was quite a ways away from us," Burns said. "Then that day, I got a call from the fire behavior guy saying they were seeing fire act like they'd never seen it before. In hindsight, we probably shouldn't have had them in there, but the fire easily was 10 miles away in air miles."

He saddled his favorite Appaloosa and raced into the woods and into the fire to find the crew, traveling 15 miles in about an hour - a ride that typically would take three to four hours.

"It got a little western, a little adventurous in there," he said. "We had to jump a couple of logs and the fire was roaring pretty loud."

One crew member already was out of the woods, but Burns found the other two along with a few mules and horses. They broke camp in record time and packed the mules, then set out for safer ground.

Burns knew they couldn't go back the way he came; he decided to head for a rock slide he knew about. As they rode, fire was breaking out on both sides of the trail and a fireball flashed over their heads, exploding in front of them.

"If we were five minutes more down the trail it would have hit us," he said.

They eventually had to cut the packs from the mules' backs, take the saddles off the horses and set the livestock free. The men spent a long night awake on the pile of rocks, listening to their two-way radios as fire danced all around them.

He noted that the fire got so hot it cooked fish in Landers Creek and incinerated the dropped mule packs. The next day, a helicopter lifted the men to safety. They got the animals out a few days later.

"There was so much confusion and so much fire around that nobody knew what was going on for sure. It was complete pandemonium on the radio because the fire was running toward Augusta," Burns said. "It was an unbelievable night of fire activity."

Reporter Eve Byron: 447-4076 or eve.byron@helenair.com