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MISSOULA- Firefighters have successfully surrounded the Butler Fire which is smoldering 27 miles northwest of Frenchtown, and on Saturday they moved into mop-up mode.

Crews built a sump to collect water from helicopter drops and installed hose line around much of the mile-long fire.

The Butler Fire flared up fast last week after lighting sparked it on Monday, but fire managers got resources on it quick: including six fire crews, something unusual for a 70-acre fire.

But because there is much continuous forest around the fire operations chief Sam Gibbons says it had a high potential to spread, especially with more dry, hot days ahead.

"[We've] got a long time before we'd have a season-ending event and so that was a lot of the reasons why we wanted to suppress this fire and just the proximity to Missoula, Frenchtown and the wildland urban interface," he explained.

The Butler is now mostly just creeping and smoldering and fire managers say they don't think it will burn beyond those initial 70 acres.