LANDER - Firefighters managing the LeHardy blaze in Yellowstone National Park have already employed a variety of modern-day strategies to direct the flow of the flames, and to protect man-made structures, officials said Tuesday.

And because the nearby landscape has been altered relatively recently by other wildfires - including the Clover Mist fire of 1988, which ripped through more than 140,000 acres - it's unlikely this current fire will burn out of control like the '88 fires did, said Joe Krish, incident commander for the LeHardy Fire.

Unlike in 1988, the incident team is now using advanced computer modeling, which helps predict the fire's movements and activities, and aids firefighters' decisions about "herding" the fire where they want it to go, Krish said.

The '88 fires, and other blazes since, have also helped clean the park, in several areas, of a good deal of old and dead timber and ground-level fuel, which has been replaced by new trees, he said.

So far the LeHardy fire has consumed more than 7,300 acres of forest, mostly lodgepole pines, and fire personnel have been successful in directing the blaze away from the Fishing Bridge area just north of Yellowstone Lake, said Sandra Hare, fire information officer with the incident command team.

Fishing Bridge was built in 1937 and spans the Yellowstone River about 30 miles west of the park's east entrance. There is also a store, a gas station, a camp ground and a visitor center in the area.

So far, none of the structures has been threatened.

There are 97 people working on the fire, using ground tools, engines and helicopters and it has cost the National Park Service an estimated $464,000 to manage the blaze, Hare said.

The helicopter crews have helped transport heavy equipment, they've made bucket drops of water, and Monday they performed what's called an "aerial admission," where they dropped little incendiary balls - which look like ping pong balls - that help steer the fire one direction or another, she said.

"The small incendiaries explode after they're dropped from the helicopters and they create heat, which attracts the fire and pulls it toward the 'drop' area," Hare said.

The LeHardy fire was sparked by a downed power line last week on the west side of the Yellowstone River and the park's Grand Loop Road, which runs parallel to the river.

Fanned by gusty afternoon winds, the blaze crossed the Grand Loop Road about three miles north of Fishing Bridge Junction. It jumped the river shortly after igniting.

"That part in the power line corridor - where the fire ignited - was immediately suppressed because of the threat to public safety," Krish said. "On the west side of the Yellowstone River we threw everything we had on it. Across the river, we elected not to fight that fire as aggressively as we did on the west side."

The LeHardy blaze has given firefighters a rare opportunity to employ a combination of disparate strategies on a single fire, he said. In some areas the objective has been full suppression, in others the goal has been to implement less aggressive management, Krish said.

"One thing that's going to stop this fire from moving too far east is the area that was burned during the 1988 Clover Mist fire," he said. "It's removed a lot of those dead and down heavy fuels. The fire intensity will drop significantly when it gets to some of those old burns because you have a younger stand of trees, and the trees might only be 15 feet tall and a lot of the dead and down fuels were consumed 20 years ago."

There are also some areas not far to the northeast that burned in 1988, and others that burned more recently burned to the north, all of which create natural and "pretty effective" fire breaks, Krish said.

"Because of previous fires in the area our comfort level is much higher in terms of how large we expect this fire to get and where we expect it to move," he said. "We have a great opportunity, if we need, to herd the fire in one way or another and we can tie it in to some of these previous burns."

The firefighters are also using wet meadows as natural fire breaks. Computer models help predict where the fire will go, and using those models firefighters have gotten out in front of the blaze in some areas to burn the fuel along the edges of meadow. The idea is that once the blaze moves into the area it won't be able to build up enough billowing heat to jump the break, he said. Instead, the lack of fuel should cause the fire to peter out there.

"We have a team of long-term fire analyzers that are using computer modeling programs to look at historical weather patterns, and at fuel loads out in front of the fire and they're running simulations," Krish said.

The team will make the safety of the firefighters and of the visitors in the park top priority in all decisions about managing the fire, he said. If it appears the blaze is not going to threaten any structures or people, he said, the team will not risk putting firefighters in danger.

Environment reporter Chris Merrill can be reached at chris.merrilltrib.com or at (307) 267-6722.

Wyoming wildfire moving into thinner fuels

From staff and wire reports

Three lodges were evacuated Tuesday as hot, dry and windy weather continued to fan a wildfire burning near Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming.

The Elephant Head, Goff Creek and the Crossed Sabres Ranch lodges were all evacuated, but no buildings were in immediate danger because they were all located on the backside of the fire.

"It's a backing fire, which means it's going against the predominant wind or against the slope, and it moves at a much slower rate than the head of the fire, which is being pushed by the wind," fire spokesman Ben Brack said Tuesday.

He said the number of guests and employees evacuated was not immediately available. Fire officials didn't know the exact distance between the fire and the evacuated lodges, Brack said.

The Gunbarrel Fire was burning about 40 miles west of Cody. It has charred just more than 31,000 acres, or 48 square miles, in the Shoshone National Forest east of Yellowstone. Firefighters had been successful in keeping the fire to the north side of U.S. Highway 14-16-20 that runs between Cody and Yellowstone's east entrance.

The most active part of the fire is burning in wilderness areas, away from the highway, lodges and cabins.

"It is in fact reaching some places where it's running into rocks and rocky areas on kind of the northeast corner up there," fire spokesman Steve Till said Tuesday.

"With the fewer fuels and stuff, it would be much easier to engage it up there as opposed to the heavy, thick timber where you can't really put firefighters into," Till said.

Firefighters have conducted burnouts along the highway to steal potential fuels if the fire moves in, Till said.

"There's a lot of black along the highway, which doesn't look so hot, but it's a good thing in terms of fire control," he said.

Sprinkler systems also have been erected at lodges to protect the buildings.

The fire burned an uninhabited U.S. Forest Service lodge called the Sweetwater Lodge on Sunday night, but otherwise no lodges or cabins have been lost since the fire started on July 26 from lightning.

In western Wyoming, the Bridger-Teton National Forest issued a temporary area closure Tuesday around the New Fork Lakes fire, which is burning in a remote area about 20 miles north of Pinedale.

That fire has burned about 11,585 acres, or about 18 square miles.

Also, a 50-acre grass fire broke out just north of Kaycee in Johnson County just after 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. The fire, near milepost 259 of Interstate 25, was still growing later that afternoon, said Cheryl Carpenter, manager of the Casper Interagency Fire Center.

From staff and wire reports

Three lodges were evacuated Tuesday as hot, dry and windy weather continued to fan a wildfire burning near Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming.

The Elephant Head, Goff Creek and the Crossed Sabres Ranch lodges were all evacuated, but no buildings were in immediate danger because they were all located on the backside of the fire.

"It's a backing fire, which means it's going against the predominant wind or against the slope, and it moves at a much slower rate than the head of the fire, which is being pushed by the wind," fire spokesman Ben Brack said Tuesday.

He said the number of guests and employees evacuated was not immediately available. Fire officials didn't know the exact distance between the fire and the evacuated lodges, Brack said.

The Gunbarrel Fire was burning about 40 miles west of Cody. It has charred just more than 31,000 acres, or 48 square miles, in the Shoshone National Forest east of Yellowstone. Firefighters had been successful in keeping the fire to the north side of U.S. 14-16-20 that runs between Cody and Yellowstone's east entrance.

The most active part of the fire is burning in wilderness areas, away from the highway, lodges and cabins.

"It is in fact reaching some places where it's running into rocks and rocky areas on kind of the northeast corner up there," fire spokesman Steve Till said Tuesday.

"With the fewer fuels and stuff, it would be much easier to engage it up there as opposed to the heavy, thick timber where you can't really put firefighters into," Till said.

Firefighters have conducted burnouts along the highway to steal potential fuels if the fire moves in, Till said.

"There's a lot of black along the highway, which doesn't look so hot, but it's a good thing in terms of fire control," he said.

Sprinkler systems also have been erected at lodges to protect the buildings.

The fire burned an uninhabited U.S. Forest Service lodge called the Sweetwater Lodge on Sunday night, but otherwise no lodges or cabins have been lost since the fire started on July 26 from lightning.

In western Wyoming, the Bridger-Teton National Forest issued a temporary area closure Tuesday around the New Fork Lakes fire, which is burning in a remote area about 20 miles north of Pinedale.

The fire has burned about 11,585 acres, or about 18 square miles.

Also, a 50-acre grass fire broke out just north of Kaycee in Johnson County just after 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. The fire, near milepost 259 of Interstate 25, was still growing later that afternoon, said Cheryl Carpenter, manager of the Casper Interagency Fire Center.]]->

For detailed coverage of western wildfires, log on to http://wildfires.lee.net/nr/casper/]]->