219 million gallons of rain falls on Ridge Creek Fire

After millions of gallons of rain fell on the Ridge Creek Fire on Wednesday, firefighters can look forward to traveling from the front lines soon.

“Mother nature helped us yesterday, with 1.8 inches of rain across the fire,” Gold Team Public Information Officer Catherine Hibbard said in an email Thursday. “With hard work from firefighters and precipitation, we are beginning to downsize our operations to right-size for people and equipment needed to complete the remaining work.”

All evacuation orders have been lifted in Kootenai County and fire crews are continuing mop-ups and patrols to prevent fire spread and control the perimeter.

The Gold Team estimates that around 219.6 million gallons of rainfall fell within the fire perimeter with between 1.5 to 1.8 inches of rainfall.

“Firefighters engaged in operations until weather conditions made it unsafe to do so,” the Gold Team said in a news release Thursday.

The Ridge Creek Fire was 49% contained then, with 4,474 acres burned.

Nearly 60 personnel left the fire, dropping the total workers to 374, and there could be opportunities to send “attack” crews to nearby fires to continue work where they’re needed.

Crews are working on repairs to roads and continuing suppression lines and chipping to the southwest.

Structure protection continues in the Nunn Road, Bunco Road and Hayden Lake communities while crews begin to remove unused firefighting equipment.

As fire behavior decreases and crews complete tasks, personnel assigned to the Ridge Creek Fire will be released over the next several days and re-assigned to other incidents as needed, according to the release.

The weather pattern is not expected to provide drying conditions in the near term.

"Little to no fire behavior is expected today, although some smoke may be visible in heavy timbers within the fire perimeter," fire behavior analyst Kelly Cagle said.

Forest Service Roads in the area will remain closed to protect firefighters.