Earlier this month, a helicopter took flight again over the site of the July fire in the Little Rocky Mountains, this time dropping mulch instead of water.
In all, the Bureau of Land Management covered 61 acres of burned soil on a northeastern slope of Sugar Loaf Butte with nearly 80,000 pounds of the mulch in order to mitigate the dangers flooding and erosion could pose to the town of Landusky below, where around 40 people live.
The burn area emergency stabilization project, which also included the installation of lines made up of 75 straw wattles along the slope in August, cost $800,000, according to Tom Darrington, field manager for the BLM’s Malta Field Office.
The July fire was first reported northwest of Zortman late in the afternoon on July 3 and grew to 11,699 acres. Officials think it was caused by humans.