By State › Montana

Montana: Overview

Download all of Montana as PDF Print

Everything in the main manual and the skill guides applies in Montana exactly as written. What’s different here is the specific hazard profile and the state, local, and legal context around it. This page is the starting point; the other three pages under Montana go deeper on laws, local resources, and the data behind the risks named here.

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake: the deadliest quake in Montana history

On the night of August 17, 1959, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck near West Yellowstone, triggering a massive landslide in the Madison Canyon that swept roughly 50 million cubic yards of rock and debris down the mountainside. The slide dammed the Madison River overnight, creating what’s now called Earthquake Lake. It remains the deadliest and most severe earthquake on record in Montana and the broader Intermountain West, killing 28 people, most of them campers at a full campground buried by the slide. See the Risks page for the full data.

The 2017 Lolo Peak fire: a major modern wildfire season case study

Montana’s 2017 wildfire season was one of its worst in decades, and the Lolo Peak fire, burning nearly 54,000 acres across the Lolo and Bitterroot National Forests, was among its most significant single fires, killing one firefighter, destroying two homes, and forcing more than 3,000 evacuations. The nearby Rice Ridge fire that same season burned even more acreage, together illustrating how quickly a Montana fire season can escalate from routine lightning starts to megafire conditions. See the Risks page for the full data.

What this means for how you use the rest of this manual

The manual’s Tier structure and the skill guides apply without modification. What’s different in Montana: seismic risk here is real and historically severe, not a hazard limited to the West Coast, and this manual’s evacuation and go-bag guidance applies just as directly to a fast-escalating summer wildfire season as it does to California or Oregon’s fire risk.

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