Small brush fire knocked down quickly, but a reminder of coming fire season

A small brush fire near Stemple Pass Road Thursday singed grasses and sagebrush along Poorman Creek but didn't cause any major damage.

Mona Fitzgerald reported the fire after smelling smoke while in her house. She looked out and saw smoke filtering through the trees at the back of her property, but knewnobody was supposed to be doing any debris burning. When she went to check she saw fire burning in the grass and heard it popping as sagebrush burned.

She called 911 and said it was fortunate that Fire Chief Zach Muse was headed down Stemple at the time.

She said he got there and was joined by two Lewis and Clark County Deputies. All three grabbed fire extinguishers and got to work on the fire, which had been slowly working its way toward the trees along the west bank of Poorman Creek.

Fire crews also responded to look for and extinguish any hot spots that remained.

"They were able to get it out really fast," said Fitzgerald, who thanked the firefighters for their rapid response.

Muse suspects the fire started Wednesday night in a large sagebrush along the fence line, but that it didn't go anywhere due to the high humidity and dew Thursday morning.

"This fire just shows that, even though its green, there is a lot of dead fuel underneath and it will carry fire," Muse told the BVD in an e-mail. "This fire probably skunked around for a good day, day and a half before the ground dried out enough to get it running a little bit."

Muse believes the blaze was most likely the result of fireworks that had been set off in the neighborhood, but hasn't been able to confirm it.

The small fire serves as a reminder that Lincoln may be facing an active fire season in the next couple months, following a drier than normal spring.

"We've had some rain as of late, but we didn't get the rain we needed in June to help us out," Muse said. "As a matter of fact, we got less from March through June than we average in a normal year in June alone. We need these rains every couple of days to keep us from burning up, but they may not help on the heavy dead timber in the mountains."

As summer temperatures rise, Muse said the risk of fire will as well.

"It's green and things are a little wet right now, but its gonna change fast as we start getting our normal July temps," he said. "Please be careful out there and make sure your campfires are dead out. Report any smoke you see. The public has been great and are really getting hyperaware of anything that looks out of the norm."

He said they'd rather have a false alarm than see a fire go unreported and get away from them.

Muse requested the county close debris burning in the Lincoln area last week. He said campfires are still allowed, but warned that doesn't mean people can just burn debris in campfire pits.