Firestone Flats fire fully contained
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ARLEE – The Firestone Flats Fire left more than a thousand acres burned near Arlee, but community members focused last week on the success of the emergency networks built in response to the fire instead of what it destroyed.
“Within minutes all these people were ready to take their horse trailer and rigs and go into a fire to help someone else,” Arlee resident Roxane Rinard said. “It makes my heart fuzzy. It was beautiful.”
Rinard and her husband Karl Schwab run Developing Wings and started a community website in 2005 for Arlee. The website, www.arleemontana.com, is updated by various Arlee residents and keeps the town informed about upcoming events, the area’s heritage, and local businesses.
Schwab spotted the fire shortly after it began and Rinard immediately moved the webcam for the site where it could record the fire. She then logged onto Facebook and gathered information about where evacuees could take shelter, which volunteers were willing to move livestock and other pertinent information.
“We had more help than we needed,” Rinard said.
Anna Baldwin found this out when she immediately opened Arlee High School after the evacuation order to shelter evacuees.
“We don’t think that many people (will) show up, but I came here in case someone needed it,” Baldwin said at the time.
The high school closed after an hour’s time, and the handful of evacuees who didn’t stay with friends or neighbors settled in at Heart View Center (former community retreat/swim center) to wait out the fire.
Rinard continued to update the website with official information and let people discuss the fire on the Arlee Facebook page.
“Instead of relying on newspapers we needed something in real time,” Rinard said. “We needed to make sure the information was accurate for the website. There’s this inherent mistrust of Facebook. So we put the discussion on Facebook and the information on the website.”
Rinard also helped create a list of the evacuee’s addresses and phone numbers so officials could contact the families once the fire danger subsided.
“I didn’t see where any of these government entities were doing that,” Rinard said.
The government agencies eventually used Rinard’s list to notify residents it was safe to return home.
Rinard said although she and many others volunteered to help coordinate citizens, quick action by the local fire department is what truly saved the day.
“I would not liked to have been the one at the bottom of a 1,000 foot wall of fire, but they were there,” she said.
The structures that were threatened by the fire were saved because of the quick action of the local departments immediately after the fire began, local and federal fire response spokespeople said.
Even though the Firestone Flats Fire is now fully contained, Rinard is working on ways to improve fire response via the web in the future.
“It’s not if we have another fire, it’s when we have another fire,” Rinard said.
