Wapiti fire swells to 90,000 acres, still zero percent contained

As its smoke drifts down toward the Treasure Valley, the nearly-90,000-acre Wapiti fire near Stanley is still wholly uncontained.

As of Thursday morning, 978 personnel are working on mitigating the Custer County blaze, up from 620 on Tuesday. State Highway 21, meanwhile, remains closed from east of Lowman through Stanley. As of Thursday evening, Highway 75 remained open.

“One thing that really helped fire behavior was (that) most of the area for most of the day was pretty much smoked out, so we didn’t have that direct sunlight,” the Rocky Mountain Incident Management Team’s Travis Lipp said in a Thursday briefing. “That allowed our folks to get a lot of work done throughout the entire fire area yesterday.”

Lipp said that crews were engaging in mitigation efforts such as strategic burning and setting up structure defense systems around the fire’s perimeter. They have contained spot fires near the blaze’s east side, and are trying to keep the fire from crossing Highway 21.

“It’s going to be dry for the next several days, so we are anticipating fire activity to increase,” he said. However, “a lot of that smoke will be from interior burning.”

Adding to the angst of the massive blaze is the area in which it is impacting. Picturesque Custer County is located over 200 miles to the northeast of Boise and is home to Stanley, an area known for its natural beauty and outdoor adventure. Just north of Sun Valley and home of the Salmon River and Sawtooth National Forest, the region’s mountain landscapes and abundance of lakes make it a popular destination for those in the Treasure Valley and beyond.

Due to weather patterns pushing smoke from the Wapiti Fire toward the Treasure Valley, air quality is expected to be in the orange (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups) and red (Unhealthy) levels on the Air Quality Index (AQI) for the first half of the long weekend.

“Unfortunately, those fires are going to keep burning for a while, and it’s going to depend on weather pattern, who gets the smoke and where,” Idaho Department of Environmental Quality regional airshed coordinator Michael Toole said. “Right now, it’s here for the short term.”