August 03, 2006

Fire continues, but St. Mary restrictions lifted

From the Thursday, August 3, 2006 online edition of the Daily Inter Lake . . .

As firefighters continued to make progress on the Red Eagle fire, an evacuation of St. Mary was lifted and the east end of Going-to-the-Sun Road was reopened Wednesday night.

The evacuation was enacted Saturday when the fire romped toward St. Mary along the southeast shore of St. Mary Lake. Since then it has burned more than 25,000 acres, approaching within less than a mile of St. Mary.

Residents, visitors and business owners were basically run out of town and have been eager to return.

“People want to get back into town, to get their businesses open again,” said fire information officer Kim Nelson.

The decision to lift the evacuation was made by the incident management team on the fire along with Glacier National Park, Cascade County and Blackfeet tribal officials.

Read the entire article . . .

Posted by nfpa at August 3, 2006 01:45 PM