OLNEY — Crews are making steady progress on the Skillet Fire, which is burning in heavy timber in the Flathead National Forest roughly 15 miles west of Olney.
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As of Tuesday morning, the fire has burned 3,364 acres and is 82% contained.
The Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team 7 is transitioning off the Skillet Fire and handing it over to the local Type 3 Incident Management Team, which is assuming command.
“So this fire is in a great place, and I look forward to seeing the type 3 team finish this strong,” said Great Basin Complex Incident Management Team 7 Public Information Officer Jen Rabuck.
Rabuck said crews have been busy building containment lines around the fire using heavy equipment with both ground and air support to clean up hot spots.
“And we’ve gotten it to a really good place where all the critical values that are to the south and east of the fire, a few of them over to the west of the fire have been essentially protected from the southern spread,” said Rabuck.
Rabuck said crews have taken advantage of the East Fork Fire scar from 2023 that sits just north of the Skillet Fire.
“It’s creating a containment feature, so we’ve run a bunch of analytics, some modeling, we’ve seen where it has bumped up against that East Fork Fire scar and that serves as a holding feature, a slowing feature at the least, so the type 3 team can come in and actually use that feature without having to do additional disturbance on the landscape," said Rabuck.
As the type 3 team transitions in, the number of people working on the fire will drop to around 200.
Local Type 3 Incident Management Team Spokesman Clint Dean said crews will prioritize mopping up hot spots.
He expects the fire to continue to burn well into September.
“Barring any unexpected weather events or unforeseen challenges that could be presented in the coming five to six weeks left of fire season, you know we’re feeling really good about where we are at right now and hoping that our lines hold and we don’t see any substantial growth," said Dean.
