Jolted awake by the sound of a thunderous boom at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, Indian Creek resident Melissa Young immediately knew something was amiss.
"It was like a bomb," Young said Tuesday morning.
The loud reverberation Young heard was caused by lightning that struck a sagebrush-covered hillside next to her family's home at the upper end of East Gulch Road in the Indian Creek valley northeast of Hailey. The lightning storm reportedly passed over the Wood River Valley area around midnight Monday.
The family's neighbor just up the road, Mark Gasenica, telephoned just a few minutes later.
"He said, 'There's a fire outside your house,'" Young said.
Looking out a window, the Youngs could indeed see that the slope next to their home was ablaze.
The fire started just far enough away from the Youngs' home that firefighters from nearby Wood River Valley fire departments were able to respond in time to keep the reportedly 30-foot flames from lapping too close, Young said. Following firefighters' advice, the family—Melissa, Dan and 3-year-old Collin—evacuated the home and checked into a Hailey hotel.
Young said at first she didn't think the fire would give firefighters too much trouble.
But bringing the fire under control and protecting the eight or nine homes along East Gulch Road would take nearly 80 firefighters all night and into the mid-morning hours Tuesday. A close inspection of the Youngs' house shows just how lucky the family is to still have a place to call home.
Surrounding the structure on three sides are the blackened remains of sagebrush and grass.
"If you guys weren't there our home would be on fire," Young told Wood River Fire & Rescue Assistant Chief Jeff Nevins.
That the lightning strike caused the west-facing hillside to immediately go up in flames is indicative of just how serious fire conditions are this summer, Nevins said, pointing out that in many cases lightning strikes will smolder for hours or even days before taking off.
"This is a really dry year, unprecedented from what we've heard," he said.
From its ignition source near the upper end of East Gulch Road, the blaze quickly spread north along the base of the steep west-facing hillside and then began to climb in elevation toward several stands of Douglas fir located over a major ridge on the north face of the mountain. The large pyramid-shaped mountain on which the fire burned is easily visible by travelers driving north or south along state Highway 75 between Hailey and Ketchum.
"It was some of the weirdest (fire) behavior we've seen in a while," Nevins said.
In all, the East Gulch Fire burned more than 100 acres by 10 a.m. Tuesday, incident commander and Wood River Fire Chief Bart Lassman said from the perimeter of the blaze. At the time, the fire hadn't reached the nearby timber and appeared largely under control due to repeated bucket drops from the helicopters called in to work the blaze.
Only a few small flames could be seen at the time and were burning mostly along the fire's perimeter.
Because the aerial attack on the fire couldn't begin until daylight Tuesday, ground crews were responsible for keeping the blaze away from the homes along East Gulch Road, Lassman said. The crews had their hands full as down-canyon winds sent the fire in exactly the wrong direction.
"It was driving the fire right into the structures," Lassman said.
However, using water from fire hoses, the crews were able to direct the flames.
"They were able to work the fire right around the homes," Lassman said. "My hat goes off to them. The structure protection group did an incredible job."
In addition to the Blaine County fire crews, Lassman also called in southern Idaho crews from Filer, Gooding, Wendell and the Jerome Rural Fire Department to serve as backup in case any other emergencies developed.
The East Gulch Fire only adds to what is already a remarkably active fire season. As of noon on Tuesday, a reported 17 large wildfires were burning throughout Idaho, Interagency Fire Center in Boise reports.
The largest of is the massive 562,278-acre Murphy Complex Fire burning through sagebrush, grass and juniper trees in extreme southern Idaho. Closer to the Wood River Valley, large fires include the 10,884-acre Trapper Ridge Fire on the Boise National Forest just west of the Sawtooth Wilderness Area, the 1,500-acre Van Horn Fire north of Challis and the 5,300-acre Middle Fork Complex 18 miles northeast of Lowman.
Flames from the East Gulch Fire, which burned mostly on U.S. Bureau of Land Management-administered land northeast of Hailey, scorch a sagebrush-covered hillside Tuesday near numerous residences. Photo by David N. Seelig
