The explosive Castle Rock Fire is not the first brush with disaster the Warm Springs drainage has encountered this century.
Many residents will remember the 2001 Sage Fire that charred the north side of Warm Springs Canyon above the intersection of Sage Road and Skiway Drive.
At 300 acres, the Sage Fire pales in comparison to the voracity of the Castle Rock Fire. However, it too hit close to home for many Warm Springs residents.
It was the end of another long, hot July in Ketchum. A local landscape company was tending to one of its properties when, it was subsequently reported, a riding lawnmower became high-centered, causing sagebrush and grass to catch fire, quickly spreading up the slope and onto national forest land.
The key in the early extinguishing of the Sage Fire was a strong aerial attack. Within hours, four heavy air tankers had dropped 30,250 gallons of retardant. Two single-engine tankers dropped 21 loads of retardant and foam, and four helicopters deposited numerous loads of water, suctioned from the nearby Penny Lake, onto the fast moving flames.
As the aerial attack worked to prevent the flames from cresting the sagebrush hill and descending into the heavily treed Adams Gulch, hand crews from the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and Ketchum and Sun Valley fire departments simultaneously worked to prevent the fire from burning back down the hill, toward the homes on the canyon floor.
At its height, the fire occupied 160 firefighters from seven agencies. The fight lasted more than 80 hours, starting at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday until it was declared controlled at 6 p.m. the following Saturday. There were no injuries, and no structures were destroyed. The only casualty was the lawnmower.
In October 2004, The Wirth Co., a Ketchum-based landscaping business, agreed to pay $225,000 to the Forest Service to contribute to the $310,600 cost of fighting the fire.
According to Ketchum District Ranger Kurt Nelson, the settlement, paid out by an Iowa-based insurance company, did not constitute an admission of liability on the part of The Wirth Co.
An early and intense aerial bombardment combined with hard work by more than 160 firefighters saved Warm Springs and Adams Gulch from the flames in 2001. Photo by Willy Cook
