The Powerline Fire of 2017 and the evacuation of Pauline

On the evening of Friday, August 4, 2017, a fire started on Fort Hall Reservation land beside the Arbon Valley Highway, at the north end of the valley. In the next five days the Powerline Fire, as it was named, burned about 53,000 acres, spread into the Caribou-Targhee National Forest south-west of Pocatello and forced the people of Pauline from their homes.

The first two nights

The fire was reported about 8:30 that Friday evening, off the highway near Ramsey Road, on reservation land less than ten miles west of Pocatello. By Saturday morning, East Idaho News reported, it had burned about 3,000 acres, crossed the highway and burned at least one power pole. Power County law enforcement had evacuated some residents, and crews from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Fort Hall, Chubbuck and Pocatello were working it.

By Saturday evening the estimate had grown to about 30,000 acres. A BLM news release said the fire was human-caused and "has jumped the Arbon Valley Highway several times." Strong winds drove it north-east through grass, sagebrush and juniper toward the national forest, with flames 35 to 40 feet long. Firefighters worked through the night to protect buildings, but "six outbuildings were consumed by the flames," and about five homes were threatened. The release said no closures were in place, but the next day the Power County Sheriff's Office said the highway had been closed since Saturday from Rattlesnake Road to Ramsey Road (which it spelled Ramsay).

The fire burned aggressively that night, and by Sunday afternoon it had moved into the national forest. On Sunday, August 6, the residents of Pauline were told to leave, along with campers on the South Fork of Mink Creek. Pauline lies at the northern end of Arbon Valley, where the valley meets the reservation, about 20 miles south-west of Pocatello. Crews carried out burnout operations to protect the town, about 20 homes were reported threatened, and aircraft had dropped more than 160,000 gallons of retardant. No buildings were lost that day. By Monday morning the fire covered 51,051 acres and had crossed into Bannock County about four miles south-west of Pocatello.

Pauline

Dezi Williams, of the Pauline area, told the Idaho State Journal that the fire came within a mile of her place. She was helping clear out her in-laws' barn on the nearby mountain when the flames came close and firefighters told them to go. She estimated that the flames came within 30 to 40 yards of a neighbor's house, and she thought it would burn. Aircraft then dropped retardant, and after a few passes the fire there was out. None of those homes was damaged. She said local farmers and ranchers were using their own equipment to protect property, and that neighbors helped one another. "We're a little valley and we're really close," she said.

On Monday, August 7, people along the northern edge of the fire, down to about Rattlesnake Road, were allowed home, but Pauline residents were still under evacuation orders. By Tuesday evening the fire's spokesman said no homes were threatened and no evacuation orders remained. Power had been restored once the lines and poles were repaired. Six buildings had been destroyed in all, and residents had lost some outbuildings and some "much-needed haystacks," but no homes.

Rain, cattle and a meeting

By Tuesday night, August 8, 468 people were on the fire. Thunderstorms brought rain, cooler air and higher humidity, and fire activity was minimal. On Wednesday morning it was reported at 53,706 acres and 47 percent contained; the Journal had given 53,076 acres the night before, and the reports do not explain the difference. Crews were to begin wood chipping on the southern edge of the fire at Pauline, to guard against a flare-up, and were strengthening its 72-mile perimeter, with most of the firefighting resources on the south side near Crystal Creek. The highway was open again, but drivers were warned that cattle displaced by the fire might be on the road.

The fire burned across reservation land, national forest, BLM land and state land. Officials said it was human-caused, not started by lightning, which did not necessarily mean it was suspicious, and the sheriff asked anyone who knew how it began to come forward. No later report of the cause has been found.

A community meeting was called for 8 p.m. that Tuesday at Arbon Elementary School. The day before, a notice signed by Nancy Fitch on this site had invited residents to hear a presentation from the Forest Service at the school at 8 p.m., with a representative of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; it gave the date as April 8, almost certainly a slip for August 8.

A valley without a fire department

Arbon Valley had no fire department. In 2012 the Idaho State Journal reported that when a fire started, neighbors called one another and turned out with whatever farm equipment and tanker trucks they had. "Everyone in the valley is part of the volunteer fire department," Hans Hayden, a lifelong valley farmer of the Hayden family, told the paper.

A letter from the BLM's Pocatello Field Office, posted on this site on December 29, 2017, invited landowners and local cooperators in southern Power County and northern Oneida County to an open house at Arbon Elementary School on January 10, 2018. The letter said that in 2017 firefighters had faced difficulties in areas that had no rural fire district or rangeland fire protection association, nonprofit groups of landowners that Idaho law has allowed since 2013 to help prevent and fight range fires. The meeting was to explain both, see whether landowners wanted either for these "unprotected areas," and answer questions about fire suppression and post-suppression rehabilitation related to "the 2017 fires." Whether a district or an association came of it is not known.

A 2024 Idaho State Journal article on Thompson Farms of Arbon, honored as a century farm, recalls that a fire threatened the farm along its main fence in 2017 and that several neighbors came to help the Thompsons put it out. "When there's a fire, the whole community comes to help," Tyler Thompson said in a family video the paper quoted. The article does not say whether it was the Powerline Fire.

The Powerline Fire should not be confused with the fire of August 2016 in the Starlight Creek area, which a post on this site heads the "Power Line fire." That fire, probably started by lightning, burned more than 4,000 acres.

The story as reported

East Idaho News, August 5, 2017, online edition. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.

ARBON VALLEY — A human-caused wildfire that began on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation had spread across an estimated 30,000 acres by Saturday evening, August 5, 2017, destroying six outbuildings and putting about five homes at risk, the Idaho Bureau of Land Management said.

The blaze, named the Powerline Fire, was first reported at about 8:30 p.m. Friday, August 4, some seven miles south-east of American Falls in the Arbon Valley area. Since then it had crossed the Arbon Valley Highway more than once. Investigators were looking into how it started.

Strong winds were driving the fire to the north-east, toward the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, through grass, sagebrush and juniper. Crews described extreme fire behavior, with flames reaching 35 to 40 feet in length.

Firefighters spent Friday night defending buildings in the fire's path, but six outbuildings were lost. Fire managers said about five homes near the fire were still threatened. No closures had been ordered.

On the ground the agency listed 15 engines, six water tenders, four bulldozers and two hand crews. In the air were three single air tankers, two heavy air tankers and one very large air tanker, and more help had been requested.

A Type II Great Basin incident management team led by Brook Chadwick was to take charge of the fire at noon Sunday. Until then, the Fort Hall Department of Public Safety was answering the public's questions.

On this site: Pauline and West Fork; Lightning fires and the farmer firefighters; Fire fighting farmers of Arbon Valley; and the original notices for the August 2017 meeting and the January 2018 BLM meeting.