The Sky Is Raining Ash, but These Montanans Are Holdouts at Home

WEST GLACIER, Mont. —  With the worst forest fires in decades turning the Big Sky into a pewter-gray lid, most residents had no qualms about heeding evacuation orders from the Flathead County sheriff.

But not Quintin and Catherine Richter. They’ve owned and operated San-Suz-Ed RV Park for 40 years, and Quintin says they don’t intend to leave until “the smoke gets so bad we can’t breathe.”

So sit down, Quintin tells a visitor, and have a bowl of ice cream.

Such is the atmosphere among the estimated 70 households ignoring the “mandatory evacuation” issued Monday in the area outside the west entrance to Glacier National Park.

They are a loose collection of self-proclaimed stalwarts and hardheads, people with a streak of frontier stubbornness that is a point of pride among Montanans. They stay because they want to, and, under Montana law, police can’t force residents to leave their homes.

Even as the sky rained ash Wednesday, and officials warned of rising winds, these holdouts contained their nerves with an odd joviality, entertaining visitors, joking, drinking beer and watching the fire play out as a real-life drama.

Many of the estimated 500 homes within the evacuation zone lie along the U.S. Highway 2 corridor, which offers a panoramic view of the southwestern edge of the 14,200-acre Robert fire, now within a mile of West Glacier. So some holdouts spend the days rocking on porches or reclining in lawn chairs as if watching a giant television. The outward calm belies a deepening tension.

More than 900 firefighters are battling the Robert fire. The sound of fire engines and heavy machinery fill the air, along with the chest-thumping chop-chop-chop of helicopters coming and going in seemingly all directions.

The normally crystal blue sky is colored by the smoke from two other wildfires in the park. The Wedge Canyon fire, near the Canadian border, has burned more than 18,000 acres, and the Trapper Creek fire, in a remote region within the park, has blackened 16,500 acres. Officials say the region is in the midst of a five-year drought that has created the worst fire conditions in decades.

The fires couldn’t have come at a worse time economically. July and August are peak tourist months, typically generating $1 million a day for the eight-county region in and around the park. Up to 2 million people a year come to Glacier, but with the west entrance closed off and news of the fires spreading, business has suffered.

“If you don’t make money now, you’re not going to make any money,” says an ornery Quintin Richter, 77, sitting back in a lawn chair in a quiet shade outside the front door. “We’re not like the farmers. The government subsidizes them. The working folk, we don’t get anything.”

He’s sitting in a circle that includes his wife, a 12-year-old grandson and a neighbor, who is also a holdout.

Catherine Richter, 72, says there were more than 20 RVs in their park on Monday when the deputies issued the evacuation notice. All paying guests were forced to leave; after signing a police waiver saying they were staying on, the Richters settled in.

Richter packed some of her precious belongings, including $20,000 worth of silver jewelry from the camp gift shop, into a car -- just in case. Asked why she and her husband won’t leave, she says: “Everything here we built from scratch.”

Up the road on Highway 2, Dianne Jones sits on a log bench outside the Rawhide Trading Post, smoking a cigarette. Jones is a holdout. She lives in an area called Lake Five, about two miles from the park entrance. Flakes of ash float from the sky as she watches firetrucks zoom by.

“I’ve been evicted before, but I’ve never been evacuated,” Jones says with a laugh. Like the Richters, she and her husband have packed up some things. They have two llamas, a dog and a cat ready to go as well. But Jones says she doesn’t intend to leave until the fire crosses the middle fork of the Flathead River, which is only a half-mile from their house.

She’s calm on the outside but nervous on the inside, she says, “like everyone else.” Jones says that she’s been assessing the fire on her own. Several times a day, starting at sunrise, she’ll get in her truck and scout the perimeter of the Robert fire, getting as close as she can. At this moment, she says, she doesn’t feel in imminent danger, even though officials continue to ratchet up the warnings.

Police and fire officials on Wednesday issued a “red alert” to all holdouts, warning of temperatures as high as 100 degrees and wind gusts of up to 22 mph. The winds were expected to be blowing east, which could blow the fire toward West Glacier and vicinity.

Northwest Montana has had its share of wildfires over the decades -- a dozen major ones in the last century. Just two years ago, the Moose fire burned more than 70,000 acres, including 24,000 acres inside Glacier. Flames came to within eight miles of West Glacier. The fire went on for almost two months.

But the one people are talking about these days is the Half Moon fire of 1929, whose path more closely resembles that of the Robert fire. The Half Moon blaze started outside the town of Columbia Falls and swept through Apgar Village, which lies near West Glacier. The Half Moon fire cut a 23-mile swath and claimed more than 103,000 acres.

There are now more than 2,000 firefighters in and around Glacier fighting the three main blazes.

Some officials speculate the Robert fire will probably burn through August, and the two other fires could burn into September.

“Here’s the main thing to know,” says Peter Buist, a spokesman for area firefighters. “We can only steer fires. The weather puts them out.”