Wildfires of 1997

Herd Fire

1997MontanaWildfire

The Herd Fire burned 2,081 acres in Montana, in 1997. It was discovered on October 17, 1997, and contained on October 17, 1997. The cause was recorded as smoking.

Size
2,081 acres
Discovered
October 17, 1997
Contained
October 17, 1997
Cause
Human

Map

The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 2,260 acres. Point of origin as reported, 48.200, -108.417.

The record

Reported final size
2,081 acres
Burned area mapped by MTBS
2,260 acres
Discovered
October 17, 1997, 2:40 p.m. local time
Contained
October 17, 1997, 10:00 p.m. local time
Cause
Human, Smoking
State
Montana
Land ownership at origin
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Reporting unit
Fort Belknap Agency
Agency
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Incident type
Wildfire
MTBS fire identifier
MT4818610842119971017
MTBS assessment
Initial
Fire occurrence record
W-362016

The three sizes are three measurements: the size the agency reported when the fire was out, the burned area MTBS drew from satellite imagery before and after, and the GIS area inside the final perimeter, unburned islands included. They rarely agree exactly.

Other large fires in Montana in 19972

FireAcresStartCause
Ca Road Fire2,000Mar 19, 1997Human
T.k.fire1,205Sep 17, 1997

Every fire of 1997 Montana fire history

Nearby

Sources

Burned areas and ignition dates from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), a program of the US Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service. Fire reports from Short, Karen C. 2022, Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014], 6th Edition, Forest Service Research Data Archive, doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6. Records before 2014 were joined by this site: a fire report to the burned area its MTBS identifier names, a perimeter to the burned area it lies in when the names or the sizes agree.