Firefighters continue to battle the Bench Lake Fire in the Sawtooths

People packed the community center on Wednesday night for an update from fire officials and the Sawtooth National Forest on the status of the Bench Lake Fire.

The fire started on Thursday, July, 11 and on Saturday evening the Great Basin Incident Management Team Four took over command with a goal of limiting the smoke and the intensity of the fire while protecting Redfish Lake Lodge and the surrounding forest.

"We have been working to build a buffer around the fire with fire," said Monica Morrison, an operations section chief. "We have been able to bring the fire pretty close to the lodge and the lakeshore edge and then to a hand line that we built and the point of that is if the fire comes that way there’s nothing left for it to burn. That is a big win for this particular fire."

As of Thursday morning the wildfire has burned around 2,000 acres with three percent containment. The terrain in the Sawtooths has made fighting this fire challenging. So far two scoopers and the helicopters have dumped nearly one million gallons of water on the fire to limit the spread and protect firefighters.

"The only way we put these fires out is with boots on the ground," said Morrison. "So if we can use water in conjunction with boots on the ground that’s when it is more effective or we can use it to slow the spread until we can get people into those areas."

Morrison hinted that this fire might burn for a while and the team added an air resources advisor this morning. To check updates on the Bench Lake Fire you can click here. The forest service also implemented stage one fire restrictions limiting campfires to designated areas and fire rings.

Custer County Sheriff's Office marine deputy John Haugh has been working on Redfish Lake since it started clearing boats off the water on Thursday and helping with the evacuation of the Redfish Lake complex on Friday which included transporting backpackers out of the area. The area remains closed to the public.

"It’s been very emotional, very hard, but very rewarding too," said Haugh. "I’m one person, one boat and the lake is seven miles long."

John is now working with the incident management team as a plane guard, an emergency ambulance while also ferrying firefighters and their equipment across the lake. The terrain has made it difficult to access the fire as firefighters can either hike in or catch a ride with John and his Chesapeake Bay Retriever Zak.

"Without exception most of them are very happy to get a boat ride across this smoky beautiful lake," said Haugh. "Plus, I’m allowed to take my dog with me. I think the hot shot crews adopted my dog and like him more then me, but so he was a big hit for their moral."

Monica Morrison also told us most of what has burned so far has been dead or downed trees. There has been minimal burn so far on the living lodge pole pine that dominate this landscape.

“Spirits are high," said Morrision. "I kind of mentioned it in there a lot of us are from pretty close to the area and recreate here ourselves so it is really neat when you can go to a place that is special and it is very rewarding to be able to do some work in that area."

The people of Stanley expressed their gratitude towards the firefighters at the community meeting on Wednesday night. However, they also worry about their businesses as this small mountain town relies on the summer tourism season to get them through the year.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation and we learned that will not change until professional wildfire investigators can get in there and determine the cause.