Kraft Springs Fire
The Kraft Springs Fire burned 69,900 acres in Montana, in 2002. It was discovered on August 30, 2002, and contained on September 9, 2002. The cause was recorded as natural. Incident teams reported 1 structure destroyed.
- Size
- 69,900 acres
- Discovered
- August 30, 2002
- Contained
- September 9, 2002
- Cause
- Natural
- Structures destroyed
- 1
Map
The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 66,247 acres. Point of origin as reported, 45.661, -104.119.
The record
- Reported final size
- 69,900 acres
- Burned area mapped by MTBS
- 66,247 acres
- Area inside the final perimeter
- 85,186 acres
- Discovered
- August 30, 2002, 9:30 a.m. local time
- Contained
- September 9, 2002, 6:00 p.m. local time
- Cause
- Natural
- State
- Montana
- Land ownership at origin
- Forest Service
- Reporting unit
- Custer Gallatin National Forest
- Agency
- Bureau of Land Management
- Unit
- MTNRC
- Part of
- Kraft Spring Complex
- Incident type
- Wildfire
- MTBS fire identifier
- MT4566710414620020830
- MTBS assessment
- Initial
- Fire occurrence record
- FS-380941
- Note on the perimeter
- GPS
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.
From the incident teams’ reports
The status summaries (ICS-209 forms) the incident teams filed: 11, from August 30, 2002 to September 9, 2002. These are the teams’ own estimates, written while the incident was running, and personnel is totaled from the resources each report lists. A fact the reports leave blank is not shown, and a zero on the form is treated as blank.
- Structures destroyed
- 1
- Most structures threatened at once
- 9
- Most personnel assigned
- 761 on September 7, 2002
- Most aircraft assigned
- 5
- People evacuated, at the most
- Evacuations were reported; no count was filed
- Cost reported by the teams
- $2.5 million, in 2002 dollars
- Cause on the reports
- Lightning or other natural
Acres reported by day
The largest rise between two days’ reports was 33,700 acres, on September 4, 2002.
Reported acres by day, as a table
| Day | Acres | Change from the day before |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 30, 2002 | 150 | |
| Aug 31, 2002 | 300 | +150 |
| Sep 1, 2002 | 708 | +408 |
| Sep 2, 2002 | 5,800 | +5,092 |
| Sep 3, 2002 | 6,300 | +500 |
| Sep 4, 2002 | 40,000 | +33,700 |
| Sep 5, 2002 | 52,000 | +12,000 |
| Sep 6, 2002 | 55,000 | +3,000 |
| Sep 7, 2002 | 69,900 | +14,900 |
| Sep 8, 2002 | 69,900 | 0 |
| Sep 9, 2002 | 69,900 | 0 |
Other large fires in Montana in 200212
| Fire | Acres | Start | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| KraftSprings Fire | 69,447 | ||
| Line Creek Fire | 9,700 | Jun 28, 2002 | Natural |
| Fox Creek Fire | 6,300 | Jul 11, 2002 | Natural |
| Red Waffle Fire | 5,859 | Jul 14, 2002 | Human |
| Cow Creek Fire | 5,495 | Sep 4, 2002 | Natural |
| Pishkun Fire | 5,000 | Feb 21, 2002 | Human |
| Unnamed Fire | 4,277 | Sep 4, 2002 | Natural |
| Steamboat Fire | 2,921 | Jul 16, 2002 | Human |
| Sheep Creek Fire | 2,016 | Aug 15, 2002 | Natural |
| Whitewater Fire | 1,652 | Apr 15, 2002 | Human |
| Brushlake Fire | 1,200 | May 3, 2002 | Human |
| Cap Rock 2 Fire | 1,000 | Apr 13, 2002 | Natural |
Nearby
Sources
Perimeters from the National Interagency Fire Center’s Interagency Fire Perimeter History, compiled from the Forest Service, BLM, BIA, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, the Alaska Interagency Fire Center and CAL FIRE. 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. Incident figures from ICS-209-PLUS: St. Denis, Lise A., Karen C. Short, Kathryn McConnell, Maxwell C. Cook, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Mollie Buckland and Jennifer K. Balch, 2023, All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020, Scientific Data 10, 112, doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01955-0; data on figshare, doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19858927.v3, licensed CC BY 4.0. This site matched each incident to the fire by the dataset’s own links where it has them, and otherwise by name, start date, state and size, and left out figures too large to be possible for a fire of its size.