Remembering Red Bench

POLEBRIDGE — Thirty years ago, Richard Hildner looked down from the passenger seat of a Cessna 206 and saw history billowing his way as the Red Bench Fire exploded in the mountains above Polebridge.

“I’ve been around a lot of fire and this thing just came alive. It was living and pulsating,” said Hildner, currently a Whitefish city councilor who on Sept. 6, 1988, the day the Red Bench Fire gripped this tiny community with fear and set its residents’ world ablaze, was working as an aerial observer for the U.S. Forest Service. “I’ve never seen fire behavior like that, and that’s what I did for the Forest Service. I was a fire behavior analyst. I had never seen fire behavior like this.”

Most people remember the landmark wildfire season of 1988 as the year of the Yellowstone National Park fires, which burned nearly 800,000 acres and played an instrumental role in informing the public’s understanding of wildfire and its effect on natural ecosystems. For most of the summer, the famous fires in Yellowstone demanded national attention as 36 percent of the park was consumed and thousands of firefighters battled the blaze, including 4,000 U.S. military personnel.

But in Northwest Montana, residents remember 1988 as the year of the Red Bench Fire, which nearly wiped the community of Polebridge off the map when it swept east over the tiny outpost community and into the North Fork area of Glacier National Park.

Although short-lived, the Red Bench Fire had major consequences due to its threat to human life and property. It burned 38,000 acres of national park, national forest and private land, killing one firefighter and injuring 19 others on the line. Red Bench destroyed 25 homes, the Polebridge Ranger Station, the community’s namesake “pole bridge,” and consumed numerous barns and outbuildings.

Within three days, more than 700 firefighters were on the line, and at its peak 1,600 people were assigned to fight the fire or provide support. Although resources were thin, firefighters from across the nation answered the call for assistance as the battle to contain the blaze lasted for 11 days.

While maps and figures detail the scope and scale of the fire, it’s a story best told by the local residents and responders who endured Red Bench, arriving from far-flung corners of the country and banding together as neighbors to protect the community from one of the most awesome and frightening forces of nature.

Hildner, aerial observer who at the time of Red Bench had more than two decades of experience battling wildfire: I was flying over the Bob [Marshall Wilderness Area] with Mike Strand of Strand Aviation to make sure everything was buttoned up on the Canyon Creek Fire over there. There was a red flag warning because of the wind and I remember looking over and seeing Mike tugging on his shoulder harness and figured I’d better do the same. I had it cinched down as tight as I could get it and the wind was so rough that my head was bouncing against the headliner of the plane. Mike said to me, ‘This is not going to be fun today.’ And it wasn’t.

After returning to the Kalispell City Airport and checking in at the Forest Supervisor’s office, Hildner overheard a report of a smoke sighting on Red Bench in the Whitefish Range northwest of Polebridge.

Hildner: I listened to that report and said, ‘I’m on my way.’ We gassed up the plane and we were off. As soon as we were in the air we could see the smoke.

It was kind of wispy to start with. I just looked up and I said, ‘Well, there it is.’ But it just continued to build as we approached and circled it. All of a sudden this fireball lifted up into the air. It had enough heat in it and it pulsated and it got lifted up into this growing smoke column and it bounced maybe an eighth of a mile down wind, and when it landed it just exploded. And there was this pulsing going on down on the ground as the fire accumulated and then another ball that was bigger than the first one got lifted up into the column. And this thing just started to bounce down the hillside to the east like a big orange basketball, exploding every time it landed. It was uncanny. It just glowed and grew from a half-acre to an acre to five acres. And it kept growing.

Returning to the airport after dark, Hildner jumped in his truck and headed up the North Fork Road to check in with residents, many of whom had gathered at the Red Meadow bridge to watch the fire burning along the Red Meadow Creek drainage as heavy wind gusts drove it down the mountain.

Hildner: I was just north of Red Meadow Creek on the hill and there was a whole line of vehicles and we just watched the fire come rolling down the creek. And all of a sudden it occurred to me that I was the last guy in this parade of trucks and I thought, ‘I want to get the hell out of here.’ It wasn’t until the next day that I got involved in what happened in Polebridge.

Larry Humphrey, division supervisor of the Southwest Area Type 1 Incident Management Team assigned to the Red Bench Fire: That was the most exciting fire of my life, and I fought wildfires for 34 seasons. That was when Yellowstone was burning so you couldn’t get crews anywhere. There were no resources. I got up to Polebridge and they put me with a guy named Larry Wilson, and he was quite a character, let me tell you. He took me around to look at the fire. He had a blind dog that rode in the truck and farted like nobody’s business. You had to keep the windows down so it didn’t stink you out.

Larry Wilson, longtime North Fork resident appointed as landowner liaison during Red Bench: [Laughter] That’s true. I showed Humphrey the lay of the land. We had never had a fire like that. It was a big event. I was at Sykes with Lynn Ogle from the sheriff’s office when Red Bench blew up and they called us in. Then we didn’t sleep for three days and three nights. I didn’t even know the time had passed until I finally sat down on my porch the day after the fire ran through Polebridge.

Lynn Ogle, Polebridge Fire Chief and former Flathead County sheriff’s deputy assigned to Red Bench: The sheriff told me to get up there so I picked up Larry [Wilson] and I headed up the North Fork. I had a box of Chester Fried Chicken in the backseat because I knew we were going to get hungry in the woods in the dark. You could see the column of smoke from Kalispell. By the time we got to Red Meadow Road you could see the fire coming down the drainage. I always equate it to a big grizzly bear rumbling down the mountain kind of pigeon-toed. You could see trees tumbling down in the fire and it was time to get out of there. The incident command team started to arrive and we set up camp at Moran Meadow. I slept in my truck that night and went into town the next morning to get a change of clothes so I looked decent. Little did I know that when I got back that night the fire would have blown into Polebridge and everything was pretty much on fire.

Jeff Mow, Glacier National Park Superintendent, who worked as a young ranger in Alaska when he was dispatched to the Red Bench Fire: Interestingly enough I was working at the other Glacier park — Glacier Bay National Park in southeast Alaska — and the last thing that I expected as a seasonal ranger in a marine park was to get tapped to go to a wildfire in the Rockies. But that was the nature of ’88. They were having to draw from a large geographic area. There were times during the Red Bench Fire where my crew was working side by side with Canadian crews. I had never been to Glacier National Park, and you’re brought in with a lot of smoke. You really don’t get a good sense of geography. You step off a plane, then you’re riding in the back of a deuce-and-a-half and they dump you out in a meadow, and then they put you in the back of another deuce-and-a-half and drive you out to fight the fire at night because that’s when the winds are calm, so you’re doing this all by headlamp. I honestly can’t say I saw much of Glacier that summer because we spent so much time working in the dark.

Russ Harvey, local logger working for Pat Hanley on the Red Bench timber sale when the fire blew up: We watched the fire blow up out of Red Meadow and there was no way out. I’ve never experienced anything like that. The wind blew the fire away from us, but if the conditions had been different I wouldn’t be here. It was pretty nerve-wracking. The flames would arc up above the trees and link together and the whole drainage would blow up. I was 21 years old, just a kid watching the mountain burn. We just stayed in our little spot for the next four days. When it hit the park, it was like watching someone throw darts against the mountain, just bursting into flames.

On Sept. 7, the fire made a dramatic run to the southeast and eventually burned through Polebridge, torching the historic “pole bridge” crossing the North Fork Flathead River, destroying the ranger station and nearly taking out the Polebridge Mercantile and Northern Lights Saloon before hurdling the river into Glacier National Park. Meanwhile, residents up Red Meadow Road banded together and defended their homes and cabins.

Frank Vitale, North Fork resident who helped fight the fire: When they gave us the evacuation notice they’d already determined that my cabin wasn’t going to be saved, so I signed a release paper and went up there to do what I could. The fire was advancing, moving very fast, and the winds were approaching 50 miles per hour. I stayed there all night. Some friends came up from the valley and brought chainsaws to cut line. It got pretty hairy. There was a lot of smoke and I didn’t know where the fire was, but if you’ve ever been in a firestorm it sounds like a freight train. It’s almost deafening and there’s embers falling everywhere.

People in the North Fork are pretty independent and in some respects kind of knot-headed. So I organized a half-assed crew and we got to work. Back then during the winter I was running a small sawmill so I was required by the Forest Service to have firefighting equipment, and I had a lot of experience fighting wildfire. I had a little pumper truck and went around just trying to spray out spot fires. I think we saved quite a few cabins and held the line pretty firm.

On the second day, in the afternoon, the fire really moved to the south and east toward Polebridge, and we stuck around to deal with the flare-ups and finger runs. I didn’t sleep for three days and when I finally went home there were bodies all over the floor and on the couch. I didn’t know most of them, just people taking a break from fighting the fire. I never did make it to bed. I just crashed for a few hours on the floor.

Ellen Horowitz, property owner who helped fight the fire, married to Vitale: We felt we could do a lot more good by staying and keeping everything watered down, but eventually around midnight I went down to Polebridge and Frank stayed at the cabin all night. I found out around 6 o’clock in the morning that our place was still standing. I bee-lined it back to the cabin with flames on both sides of the road. There was a lot of smoldering. After the fire jumped the river, I was sitting in our little pickup truck at the end of our driveway and it looked like Christmas lights on the hillside up in the park as the trees were torching.

Humphrey: It was on the second night that the fire really took off. When it came through Polebridge it was absolutely amazing. We had a water tender and a water cannon and the Flathead County road crew, and those guys were not used to fighting fire. They didn’t even have hard hats. At one point I looked over and a guy’s hair had caught fire. We’d spray a house, hit the flames and move on to the next one as the fire came over.

Hildner: I was with Tom Hope, the district ranger, and we loaded up a couple of drip torches to see if we could set a back burn into the fire along the old Loop Road. As fast as Tom could drive, I was on the rear bumper hanging onto the tailgate and dripping fire. I think we might have taken a little snoose out of the fire, but as soon as we got across the Loop Road and onto the North Fork Road the fire hit and we high-tailed it back to Polebridge to try and save the saloon and mercantile. Tom put me in charge and I had two 5,000-gallon water tenders. There were five guys on a county road crew, and I gave them a fire shelter and showed them how to use it. I had the water pumps parked in the meadow in front of the saloon, and when that caught fire I drove the pumps over to the other meadow in front of the Merc. Then when that meadow caught on fire I drove them back over to the other meadow that had already burned out. We were spraying water on the saloon when the pumps quit. They’d run out of gas. The road crew had a five-gallon jerry can of gasoline in the back of their truck, so I grabbed that and was pouring gas into the trucks as this vortex of embers swirled around me. Things got a little tense, but we managed to get the pumps working again and save the saloon.

As the fire burned through the meadows in front of the Polebridge Mercantile, Larry Humphrey noticed a panel of the building’s tin roof flapping in the wind, revealing an orange glow. Embers had blown into the eaves of the century-old building, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and at the time housed the post office.

Humphrey: I saw there was a fire burning underneath the tin shingles so I called the operations chief and told him I was going to put it out. I didn’t have any experience fighting structure fires, but I reasoned that this is a United States Post Office and we need to protect it. I was feeling pretty heroic and I leaned back with my Pulaski to break the glass in the front door and it was plexiglass. It just landed with a thud. The first thing I saw was 10 cases of beer stacked up against the wall and I thought that was pretty enticing. But then I went up in the loft and saw the fire burning in the roof. I got the engine crew and ran a hose up into the attic and sprayed it from the inside out. We got the fire out and saved the Polebridge Mercantile, and that was the most exciting time of my life.

Wilson: He was the savior of Polebridge. His autographed helmet and goggles are still hanging on the wall in the Northern Lights Saloon.

Humphrey: My helmet’s hanging from some elk antlers in that saloon. It’s got my name and weight printed on it, but I think my weight’s gone up a bit. A few years back my daughter and her husband and their two girls went in there and took pictures wearing my helmet from the Red Bench Fire. I’ll never forget it.

John Frederick, former owner of the North Fork Hostel, considered the honorary “Mayor of Polebridge” until his death last year (as told to historian Debo Powers): I thought because we had a ball field to the north and the fire was coming from the west to east that the big yard of the hostel — and in fact it was mostly cottonwood trees, which it still is today on that side — would pretty much protect the hostel from any real problems. Some guy decided to spend the night with me and we got two what they call shake-and-bake tents. We had them, so if we had to we would go in the middle of the yard. Two Forest Service guys came by and squirted the hostel with some water just before the fire hit there. The fire was close enough that it browned a curtain that was facing the fire.

Hildner: That’s one of my favorite stories about John. I went over to the hostel and said, ‘John it’s time to go.’ And he said, ‘I’m staying.’ So I showed him how to use the fire shelter and I left. After the fire came over the top of Polebridge, I came back and here comes John walking out of the smoke.

Up Red Meadow Road, a group of property owners and friends from both north and south of the fire continued dousing spot fires and building fire line to hold the perimeter. Led by Vitale, the group would eventually be dubbed the Red Meadow Irregulars, joining the Forest Service’s payroll to assist in wildfire suppression on Red Bench.

Vitale: When the Forest Service showed up, the division boss came up and shook my hand and told me we’d done a remarkable job holding the line. He asked me if I could wrangle together a group of 10 or 11 people and help out. It was pretty unprecedented, but we went over to fire camp the next morning and filled out the paper work. I stayed on for three weeks before they disbanded the crew. It was actually kind of a nightmare trying to keep everyone organized.

Prior to the Red Bench Fire, the North Fork was a community divided by a generational schism that separated the old guard from newer arrivals, many of them young back-to-the-landers. The Red Bench Fire bridged that gap and drew the community together, forging lifelong bonds that still endure today.

Vitale: Nobody spoke to one another back then. There was this us-versus-them mentality. It was the rednecks against the hippies. But the Red Bench Fire was a real turning point for the North Fork community. We really came together after that. I remember Larry [Wilson] and Lynn [Ogle] driving up that first night during the firestorm and you could tell their opinion of me changed. I think we’ve all had a lot of respect for each other after that.

Wilson: There’s nothing like a big fire to bring people together. There was a fellow up Red Meadow Creek, Frank Vitale, that would hardly speak to Lynn and me before that fire. He was an environmentalist and he thought we were going to cut down the whole forest or something. But some of the neighbors he thought were going to help him out got drunk, and we ended up putting him in charge of the fire. We’ve been friends ever since.

Ogle: That’s the beauty of the North Fork. You help out your friends and neighbors, and Red Bench was a real turning point for that. You can’t just stand by and say it’s not my problem. You all pull together. No matter what’s going on in the rest of the country, in the North Fork people pull together and they are good neighbors. By and large, neighbors helping neighbors is the key to our whole existence up here.

Horowitz: Disasters can really bring people together. You see what people are really like. We all learned a lot about each other.

Vitale: There were a lot of people who came to the North Fork and built their little cabins in the woods. They had never seen a wildfire, but I had been in a firestorm and I knew what was coming. Since then, the North Fork community has become a lot more fire-wise. The Red Bench Fire was the big one and a lot of people got educated pretty quick.

While firefighters received three squares a day at the Moran Meadow fire camp, Karen Feather, who owned the Northern Lights Saloon, and Dave Wedum, a former Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden who trapped grizzly bears in the area, baked pies and brewed coffee around the clock to feed local volunteers.

Vitale: Dave and Karen were really good friends and they were really good bakers. You could always find Dave drinking coffee at the Merc, but during Red Bench they were baking their heads off and they were sending pies by the dozen over to my cabin, which by then had become the base of operations. Everyone was pitching in like that. Even one of the gals from up north was making runs doing our laundry and bringing food down.

Humphrey: As firefighters we weren’t allowed to drink booze, so they closed the saloon, but this local game warden made the most fantastic pies. I’d have pie and coffee for breakfast, and then I’d head to the saloon for lunch and have a moose burger. They were so fantastic, I didn’t even go to the caterer at fire camp. They just treated us so good. They all just kind of adopted us into the community.

On Sept. 19, 1988, the fire camp began to disband, and within a few days all that remained was the imprint of tents and trailers on Moran Meadow. Two days later a new camp was established at Ford Creek work center, and mop-up activities and rehabilitation continued. Today, the scar left by Red Bench is carpeted with new vegetation and obscured by a forested canopy. But for those who lived through Red Bench and lost their homes, the wildfire left an indelible impression.

Lois Walker, unofficial archivist of the North Fork and longtime resident: It was a major event for our community. After Red Bench, Karen Feather who owned the saloon collected the names and pictures of everyone who lost their cabins that summer and gave them to Peter Moore [artist and longtime North Fork resident], and he painted portraits. Karen had T-shirts made that said, ‘I survived the Red Bench Fire.’

Hildner: I still have mine. It’s in a dresser drawer at my cabin up the North Fork.