BossK fire:

• Lightning spawned the 19 acre BossK fire in sagebrush and grass coulees about nine miles east of Pryor Saturday about 5:30 p.m.
• Engines responded from Crow and Pryor and had all flames knocked down that evening.
• A patrol remained on the fire through Saturday night.  A squad of nine firefighters from Pryor was mopping up the fire Sunday, extinguishing every ember before wind could respread any flame.
• About fifteen lightning strikes concentrated east of Pryor about 5:00 p.m. Saturday.   

Clearing brush around Spear Siding area homes:

·        Helped by firefighters, a crew of sixteen and seventeen-year-olds cleared bushes and debris to create defensible space around the homes of several mature or disabled Crow elders south of Lodge Grass last week.

• The Spear Siding neighborhood qualified for a federal grant to reduce the hazardous fuels because of thick brush and wooded areas in the vicinity of houses.
• Work continues this week, creating a few cords of firewood while reducing fire danger.  About twenty homesteads are in the “wildland-urban interface” where dense brush and tall grasses will dry out and threaten houses.

Woodpiling progress:

• Southeast of Lodge Grass, a crew dug more than two miles of handline in Kid Creek in two days, preparing for prescribed fire later in the autumn.
• The tribal lands in Kid Creek have been logged since the 1920’s, and were thinned in 2004.
• Carefully applied controlled burning should clean out underbrush and begin to restore these lands to their presettlement condition, when low-intensity surface fires burned every ten or twenty years.

Weather:

• A second cold front moves across the Reservation Monday morning, bringing north winds and scattered showers in the morning.  Skies will clear by afternoon.
• Late August is the middle of fire season.  Temperatures in Crow Agency should reach the mid-90’s Wednesday through Friday.  Grass dries out in an hour of sunshine.  Don’t get complacent--  lightning strikes can light an immediate fire, or smolder more than a week before sunny days respark them into open flame.