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Firefighters getting a handle on fires as residents begin to be let in to see damage
The worst may be over as firefighters appear to be gaining an upper hand against the two major fires in Elmore County that have burned a total of more than 265,000 acres.
The Elmore County Sheriff's Office has announced that the Pine-Featherville Road and Anderson Dam Road will be open to residents only beginning at 5. p.m. Sunday, Aug. 18. Proof of residency will be required.
Power should be restored throughout the Pine-Featherville Road area by noon on Sunday, August 18.
Residents are urged to use caution in the area as firefighting personnel and equipment are still present throughout the community.
Possible hazards that still exist in the area include falling burned trees, ash pits, as well as the potential for burned logs and rocks to fall downhill onto roadways.
For further information on road closures and road access throughout Elmore County, visit the Elmore County Sheriff's Office facebook site.
Firefighters are cautiously optimist that they're getting a handle on the fires.
"Things are changing rapidly for the better. We had a very good night," said Rich Harvey, incident commander for the Elk Complex Fire, regarding the progress made over the past 24 hours. Harvey made his comments during a community meeting at the Mountain Home Elk's Lodge Thursday night to update citizens of the status of the fire.
However, Harvey emphasized that there is still fuel left over from the Trinity blaze, and work is still needed to keep the fire contained.
"It's not even halftime yet; this is not a time for celebration," Harvey said regarding the work that remains to extinguish these range fires.
During the Thursday evening in Mountain Home, officials provided residents of the fire-stricken area with some details on the level of damage the Elk Complex Fire inflicted to communities that were in the path of the flames.
According to Chief Deputy Mike Barclay from the Elmore County Sheriff's Department, 95 percent of structures from Fall Creek Lodge and up Fall Creek Road were lost in the fire.
"It looks like an atomic bomb went off and devastated the area," Barclay said. The destruction was so thorough that deputies patrolling the area were struggling to identify their location since all of the visible landmarks were gone.
The sheriff's office completed its assessment of damage in the Elk Complex Fire area Thursday and determined that 38 residences and 43 outbuildings have been destroyed, totalling 81 structures.
The ECSO has initiated a phone line for Fall Creek and Lester Creek landowners, where the losses have occurred, to call for information on their residences at (208) 653-2505.
Photos of the fire damage showed blacked trees stripped of vegetation with some of them still smoldering. Another showed that the docks at the Fall Creek Marina has also burned.
During Thursday's briefing, sheriff's deputies met with some property owners who were asking whether their home or cabin was damaged or has survived. One woman talking to deputies that evening learned that she had lost her cabin in the fire. A few minutes later, another man smiled in relief after he learned that his cabin survived.
Meanwhile, the school in Pine was not affected by the fire, according to Cliff Ogborn from the Mountain Home School District. The school is due to reopen as soon as the area is deemed safe and children are allowed to return to the Pine community.
Property owners (only) in the Fall Creek and Lester Creek areas returned to the area Friday morning as part of escorted visits.
During a safety briefing at Thursday's meeting, Barclay warned residents planning on visiting the area that a number of dangers still exist. For example, some trees were still actively burning at the root level, and the weakened trees can fall with little or no warning.
It'll take time for teams to have resources in place to allow property owners to return to the fire-stricken areas for unescorted visits. At Thursday's public meeting, Barclay would not commit to an actual date that would happen.
The evacuation of the Pine/Featherville corridor, issued by the Elmore County Sheriff's Office, remains in place.
Fuels continue to be extremely dry and when combining with steep terrain, is "creating plume-dominated fire behavior," the Forest Service said, which means the fireline can move quickly and erratically at times.
Areas of concern remain the small settlement of Prairie on the west side of the fire and the Pine/Featherville corridor on the east side.
The southern perimeter along the South Fork of the Boise River from Smith Creek to the end of Anderson Ranch Reservoir near Pine has been contained.
A successful three-mile-long burnout operation was conducted the night of Aug.14 from the north Pine subdivisions to near the Johnson Creek bridge, further securing homes and structures along the river corridor.
Securing Prairie homes and ranches is also a priority.
Meanwhile, Idaho Power is continuing to work to restore power to the region. According to Harold Lefler, a representative with the company, the fire burned at least 45 power poles with crews having to pull and replace each of them. In addition, all of the power lines had to be replaced.
The northwest and northeast perimeters of the Elk fire are close to joining last year's Trinity Ridge fire scar. The northern edge of the fire line leading into the existing Trinity Ridge Fire is expected to produce heavy smoke until it reaches the actual burned out region.
The Elk Complex Fire has burned 117,000 acres and is 40 percent contained.
Fire fighters were "very successful" Thursday and Friday morning on the 148,000-acre Pony Complex Fire as containment jumped up to 80 percent.
Areas that had been a major focus such as the Anderson Ranch and the Danskin lookout have been secured and mopped up.
Firefighters will monitor and patrol those sides of the fire to ensure any smoldering material has been put out.
The northern end of the fire still has some heat so crews will continue to hold and improve line on the northwest flank from Blacks Creek north towards the South Fork of the Boise River.
Crews will also be working on fire suppression repair around all areas of the fire until it is complete.
The demobilization process of resources will begin in the next few days.
The Idaho Department of Fish and Game has begun trying to gauge how the fires affected local habitat and wildlife.
With so many deer and elk herds scattering due to the fire, the Fish and Game department won't have accurate numbers on losses to local wildlife until it conducts its annual survey this winter.
Officials are also unsure how much critical foraging ground was lost. However, they said the fire destroyed a significant amount of bitterbrush, which serves as an important food.
Fish and game officials expect the surviving deer and elk to start migrating in search of food and are expect to fare well in the weeks to come. In fact, several large herds of deer and elk were reported in Unit 44.
With hunting season preparing to start in Idaho, fish and game representatives said hunters have two options available if they have tags for areas affected by the fires.
The first would allow them to hunt in unaffected units versus the areas designated on their tags. The other would allow them to carry over their current tag for the 2014 season. However, hunters need to make that decision before the general and controlled hunting seasons begin.
Fire crews are expected to start demobilizing resources in the next few days.
Caseworkers with the American Red Cross are providing help for fire victims at the Parks and Recreation Activity Center, located at 440 East 8th North Street next to St. Luke's Elmore medical center. Services will be available from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. today, Aug. 16, and again from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday.
No one is currently using the Red Cross shelter at the recreation activity center and are preferring to stay with family and friends until they can return to their homes, said Red Cross representative Wade Gayler said. However, the Red Cross will keep the facility open until Sunday as a precaution.
Meanwhile, an effort was started last week to help ranchers hit hardest by the blaze.
A fundraiser planned for Sept. 28 in Mountain Home is aiming to raise funds to help ranchers whose grazing land was lost after the Pony and Elk Complex fires swept through the area.
The Southern Idaho Cattle Rancher Fire Victim Relief was an idea developed by Hailey Russ, whose family owns one of the ranches affected by the fire. Raising cattle was a way of life for her father, Jeff Arrizabalaga.
"It was everything to him," she added.
Her family had already lost 20 head of cattle due to the fire and were still looking for the remaining 100 late last week. Like some ranchers, her family had a limited amount of insurance on their cattle or their grazing land. However, it didn't include fire coverage.
"The fire took everything my dad had," she said, adding that other ranchers were hit just as hard.
"Many of these ranchers are too busy just trying to save what's left to start trying to solve these other problems," Russ said.
According to Russ, a herd of 100 cows need to eat about four tons of hay per day to remain healthy. That averages out to $800 per day for each of these herds.
The Southern Idaho Cattle Rancher Fire Victim Relief will help local ranchers find pasture and feed during these "devastating fires," she added.
While details were still being ironed out, the upcoming fund raiser is expected to include a spaghetti feed and a silent auction. All proceeds will go to help buy hay for the displaced cattle.
For more information on the benefit or to get involved, contact Russ at 599-1813 or through the Southern Idaho Cattle Rancher Fire Victim Relief link on Facebook.