Fire crews are mopping up a 15.5-acre wildfire near Wolf Creek in Lincoln County that broke out at approximately 5 p.m. Wednesday.

Doug Turman, the Libby unit manager for the Department of Natural Resources, said Thursday that the fire — dubbed the 15-Mile Fire because it broke out on the 15th mile of Wolf Creek Road — was contained that evening and should be on patrol status by today.

Wolf Creek is between Libby and Trego.

“We figure it’s probably been out there for about two weeks. That’s when the last storm went through,” Turman said Thursday. “Right now it’s in mop-up stage. They had about 10 engines out there today and they’ll be downsizing that to about four or five engines tomorrow.”

About 30 firefighters responded Wednesday, joined by another 30 people on engine crews. Firefighters from the state and the Fisher River Valley Service Area responded.

An annual firefighter training exercise, the Boorman Engine Academy, happened to be underway nearby, and Turman said those trainees were brought in to secure the fire.

“We probably would have been doing fine with just the hand crews and initial crew, but since we had our academy just over the hill, we used the opportunity to train our engine crews on a live-fire exercise, so they came over with their coaches and finalized their training.”

He said it was the biggest fire in the area so far this year, but whether it’s a harbinger of a heavy fire season is still an open question.

“Normally, we don’t get this size of a fire this early in the season,” he said, adding that conditions are drier than normal. “But what will dictate whether we have a fire season or not is how much rain we get in June and the timeliness of those storms.”

At about 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, a small fire broke out near MacGregor Lake west of Kalispell.

Jeremy Pris, the state’s fire program manager in Kalispell, said it only consumed about one-fifth of an acre, and crews had stopped the spread and were working to contain it late Thursday afternoon.

“We’re pretty confident it will be wrapped up by the end of the day,” Pris said Thursday, adding that the cause of the fire was unknown.

Reporter Samuel Wilson can be reached at 758-4407 or by email at swilson@dailyinterlake.com.