About 35 Residents Remain in Yellow Pine (See Video and Photo Gallery)

By Kathleen Kreller, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Aug. 18–On Friday, Yellow Pine residents were trimming brush and determined to stay until the last possible minute, even as forest fires burned toward town.

It’s a fiercely-independent community, where residents drive around town with chain saws and snow shovels in their vehicles, said Lorinne Munn, a six-year resident who retired to Yellow Pine.

“It’s kind of smoky, to the south it’s kind of a brown smoke. We are concerned,” Munn said. “We hear they want to do back burning and that’s why they want us to leave.”

Susan Marzec, spokeswoman for for the Landmark Complex fire, said firefighters cannot stop the flames creeping toward the area from the 43,000-acre fire.

Munn said she’s counted about 75 people still in the area, with 35 people in Yellow Pine, and the rest in surrounding areas including Johnson Creek.

Officials escort a convoy daily out of Yellow Pine, Marzec said. Because of road closures, residents fear not getting back into Yellow Pine or Johnson Creek to look after homes and animals, Munn said.

Forecasters predicted isolated thunderstorms and hot, dry winds over southern and central Idaho this weekend. A red-flag warning near Yellow Pine has fire officials concerned for the safety of die-hard dwellers there and in nearby Johnson Creek.

“We are asking people to leave. It is not safe in Yellow Pine,” said Marzec. “It’s a really serious situation. It’s not something anyone is making up. The last thing you want is to have people trapped up there.”

Fire officials planned on escorting trailers filled with livestock to fairgrounds in Cascade, Marzec said.

Boise National Forest officials said that final operations for a burnout continued Friday along the Johnson Creek drainage, around Yellow Pine and around Johnson Creek ranches. When weather and other conditions are right, the burnout will go forward, officials said.

Elsewhere in the state:

–Crews continued to battle the nearly 130,000-acre Cascade Complex fire. Evacuations were also in effect for the Warm Lake community, and the Warm Lake Highway was closed. Forecasters predicted hot, dry winds.

–Crews were battling a fire near the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory which had grown to 2,000 acres near the east butte off Idaho 20.

–Both the Middle Fork and the Main Salmon River are closed to boating and other uses in the river corridors.

Fires have burned more than 1.5 million acres across Idaho this summer.

Kathleen Kreller: 377-6418

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