JACKSON, Wyo. — In light of current efforts to fight the Pack Trail Fire, the Bridger-Teton National Forest (BTNF) is clarifying that confinement strategies, not containment strategies, are being used.
The U.S. Forest Service defines containment as a strategy where a man-made control line is established by firefighters around the entire perimeter of a fire to stop its spread. But a video shared by the BTNF on their Facebook page featuring Joe Sean Kennedy, Incident Commander Trainee, confirms that firefighters on the Pack Trail Fire are using a combination of confinement and point protection strategies, not containment.
According to Kennedy, confinement differs from containment because it’s a strategy that uses natural barriers that are non-burnable, like a meadow or lake or rocky area, to confine the fire within it.
Point protection is where firefighters put a fire line or fuel break, meaning a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that slows or stops the progress of a wildfire, around a community in a rural area; this is not considered containment because it isn’t aimed at surrounding the fire. Instead, Kennedy says point protection encourages the fire to spread in directions that do not immediately threaten homes or structures.
Kennedy says that for the Pack Trail Fire, the percentage of completion means the percentage of the fire that will no longer go past established confinement areas. As of Oct. 9, Kennedy reiterates that the Pack Trail Fire is at 60% completion.
As of Oct. 9, though, the Pack Trail Fire is also confirmed by the BTNF to still be burning across a total of 60,676 acres after merging with the Fish Creek Fire over the weekend. Find tips for dealing with wildfire smoke here.
