Bench Lake fire classified as human-caused; more smoke could be on the way

The Bench Lake Fire was caused by humans, fire officials stated for the first time Friday.

Previously, the cause of the blaze — which has burned 2,595 acres in Central Idaho, near Stanley and is currently 58% contained — was listed as undetermined. Joe Schindel, an information officer for the fire’s Complex Incident Management Team, provided no further updates on the re-classification.

“There is no additional information about the determination from us at this time, or even whether a responsible party has been determined,” Schindel said.

“If that were to happen, the case would be looked at for legal liability, and [it would be] determined if it’s a criminal, administrative or civil liability type of situation. If it is criminal, if it were to be deemed that, a citation or charges would be issued.”

This news comes after a week that included some of the year’s hottest temperatures and brought thunderstorms and winds of more than 60 mph to the Treasure Valley and eastern Oregon, where the Cow Valley and Durkee fires recently merged.

“The storms we’ve had over the last couple of days, especially on Wednesday, [were] a large lightning producer,” National Weather Service Boise meteorologist Dave Groenert said. “There were about 2,800 lightning strikes in the area that we cover in 24 hours or so, that led to a lot of new fire starts.”

Eastern Oregon’s Durkee fire is now 20% contained and spans nearly 300,000 acres as of Friday afternoon. Its combined acreage with the Cow Valley fire, with which it merged on Thursday, is more than 400,000. Meanwhile, smoke from northern California’s Park fire — for which a suspect has been arrested — is slated to blow in the Treasure Valley’s direction.

“From an air quality standpoint, the storm didn’t really do much,” Michael Toole, a regional airshed coordinator for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality, said. “The latest smoke models show a couple of things. One, it shows continued smoke from Oregon, which is the primary area we’ve been getting the smoke. It does show smoke coming from even further north. Washington, Alaska, Canada — those areas all have wildfires as well. But it does show the plume from those northern California fires kind of looping up and down through our area, too.”

Air quality over the weekend is expected to fluctuate between moderate (yellow), unhealthy for sensitive groups (orange) and unhealthy (red) on the US Air Quality Index, Toole said.

“Overall, forecasting upper orange,” he said. “It’s going to be more of the same with more sources of smoke pushing through the Valley.”