Clark Fork Fire & Rescue

12/14/2025

East Spring Creek Road is open and in remarkably good condition. Two way traffic is possible in all but a few narrow spots. Thanks much to the county and Army CoE crews that worked around the clock to get this done.

The emergency route through West Spring Creek has been closed. Particular thanks to the resident that has re-established and maintained this route for years for just this kind of situation.

12/13/2025

The Army Core of Engineers is making significant progress on getting East Spring Creek road usable, but there is considerable damage. The first and largest missing section has almost been spanned allowing access to the damage further upstream. There is no rigorous prediction for when the road will be even minimally usable for the public, but there are optimistic estimates projecting the next day or two.

12/12/2025

East Spring Creek road is still unusable and closed to all traffic. The Army Core of Engineers is taking over its reconstruction today and hopes to have it open to limited and controlled traffic in the next few days. The emergency route through W Spring Creek is open and available but deteriorating. The county is working to mitigate the worst parts. Please do not use casually to keep the road usable for urgent needs and available in future emergencies. Both ends are attended by county or sheriff department personnel.

12/11/2025

Spring Creek residents are now being actively encouraged to evacuate. The sheriff department has issued a go order. More rain and further worse conditions are expected tonight. First responders are in the neighborhood to assist. Contact dispatch if you have a particular need.

12/11/2025

Displaced Mountain View residents can go to The Filling Station on south Main St for resources.

12/11/2025

Lightning Creek is flooded. Mountain View, East Mountain view and surrounding neighborhoods are flooded with many household isolated. At present shelter in place. We are establishing emergency evacuation routes and procedures. Contact emergency dispatch via 911 for urgent needs.

08/12/2025

With our local fire bringing some attention to the topic we want to try a variation of our wildfire preparedness workshop. For as long as there is interest we invite you to the fire station for a weekly series of open ended discussions on anything related to the Lightning Creek fire in particular, or wildfires in general.

The larger public meetings we've had have given a great overview, but were not a good forum for discussing much detail. There was particular interest in a number of topics that we could expand on in these smaller conversations.

See: http://clarkforkfire.org/cwpw.html for a typical agenda for our larger workshops. We can discuss whichever of these there is interest in. Some initial possibilities might be: Ready, Set, Go; Evacuation Planning; or BCEM's BonFire program.

We'll start with this Thursday, August 14 at 6pm. Let us know if there is an particular topic you want to cover, otherwise we will determine it as we go.

08/09/2025

This evening's public meeting provided a good high level overview of this summer's featured fire activity. It also identified some important concerns among the local residents. A prominent one was air quality.

For current status there are a number of good resources. Official EPA data is available and mapped at:
https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=5f239fd3e72f424f98ef3d5def547eb5
or the AirNow interactive map of air quality:
https://gispub.epa.gov/airnow/?showgreencontours=false

These give the most accurate and reliable information, but can be cumbersome to use and more importantly are very coarse grained. There are relatively few official sensors.

For more local information PurpleAir is very useful:
https://map.purpleair.com/air-quality-standards-us-epa-aqi?opt=%2F1%2Flp%2Fa10%2Fp604800%2FcC0&select=129049 #10.65/48.1925/-116.3335
The data available in this map is crowd sourced from consumer air quality monitors. The closest are a few in Hope, and one each in Clark Fork and Heron. You could get you own instrument and add it to the network to provide the whole community with air quality information.

We will look for resources to address some of the other topics brought up and provide information as we find it.

Watch: With two minute updates, The US EPA PM2.5 Air Quality Index (AQI) is a number used by US government agencies to communicate to the public how polluted the air currently is or how polluted it is forecast to become.

08/03/2025

USFS has issued an emergency road closure for most of lower Lightning Creek Road. See the announcement and maps at:
https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-publication/idipf-lightning-creek-fire/lightning-creek-fire-emergency-closure-08-02-2025
The closure is from Regal Creek, which is just south of Morris Creek, the first bridge on Lightning Creek Road, to the junction of Trestle Creek Road.

This appears to be from about Mile 6 to Mile 18. Please correct me if you know more accurately. It includes Morris Creek, East Fork, the road to Porcupine Lake, Wellington Creek, Rattle Creek and Char Falls. Most of the good bits in that area.

The road to Moose Lake and Gem lake are not included in the closure, but I would strongly discourage travel up to, or past Char Falls on either Lightning Creek or Trestle Creek roads. Further unfavorable wind and weather may move this fire a considerable distance over the course of a day and there is no easy exit from that area past the junction.

https://inciweb-prod-media-bucket.s3.us-gov-west-1.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-08/Exhibit%20A%20NFSR%20419%20Closure.jpg?VersionId=tG3jKdhi5FEJoWkU7XxfsDPZGfNMUpwG

08/03/2025

Weather and terrain conspired strongly against the crews working on the Lightning Creek Fire the last few days. It has now escalated into a major incident with size currently estimated at 250 acres. The terrain is difficult and dangerous. The initial fire was within the area burned in the 2018 Cougar Fire. There is a considerable amount of dead-fall and precarious snags. Burning logs are not easily put out. Strong afternoon winds are easily reigniting this kind of fuel and blowing the resulting burning debris over fire lines cut during the day with tremendous effort. We will probably be dealing with this the rest of the summer.

The incident is now being managed as a Type 4 with 30+ crew. It now appears in InciWeb, so consider that the official source of information:
https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-information/idipf-lightning-creek-fire
Other information may be available at FireMappers:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/media/index.html?appid=a483112967f84db096e1c954f8249ad6
with links to WatchDuty:
https://app.watchduty.org/?search=Lightning%20Creek%20Fire
and WildFire Aware:
https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wildfireaware/ =-116.145,48.282,12,loc=-116.145,48.282

We will post more information here and around town as we get it. Watch for information on road closures shortly.

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08/03/2025

08/01/2025

The Lightning Creek Fire has expanded to 2.6 acres. It is being tended by a hot shot crew and a couple of engines. It is in a very difficult area to work within the boundary of the Cougar fire from a few years ago. Steep, a lot of dead fall and many precarious standing trees. Forest Service believes it will be in good shape by the end of the day. Meanwhile a small fire was also found up Wellington creek that is now being worked on.

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