OMAK, Wash. -- Firefighters lost no additional homes Wednesday, but made little headway in containing a wind-driven wildfire that has grown to 5,500 acres on the Colville Indian Reservation east of Omak.
The St. Mary's Mission Road Fire started Tuesday afternoon near the road's junction with Highway 155, and quickly blossomed into a roaring inferno under heavy winds.
The cause is still under investigation.
Two homes and six other buildings were destroyed Tuesday night, including a storage building that once served as an arts and crafts building at the historic St. Mary's Mission.
Officials at the nearby Paschal Sherman Indian School said they were notified of the fire soon after it started at 4:40 p.m., and immediately began evacuating 51 boarding students and some 20 faculty and staff who were still at the school.
"Ten more minutes and we would have been scrambling to get the kids out of here," said Principal Ray Leaver, who was back at the school Wednesday helping kids gather belongings to go home for the rest of the week.
Students were first bussed to the Omak Community Center, and spent the night at the Okanogan Motor Inn, eating pizza for dinner and getting a donation of pajamas and other overnight necessities from Walmart, said Superintendent Debbie Simpson.
After the students left, fire came close to the dorms, and embers ignited a spot fire across campus at the front of the school, Leaver said.
"The kids were wonderful," he said. They were understanding of why they had to leave their stuff behind. They didn't know if they were going to come back or not," he said.
A smoky smell in the dorm rooms, along with fire continuing to burn in the steep rocky slopes across from the school's entrance, convinced officials to close the school for the remainder of the week.
Boarding students were brought home Wednesday, traveling as far as Auburn, and also to Wenatchee, White Swan, Wapato and Inchelium.
Homes along St. Mary's Mission Road remain under a mandatory evacuation, said fire spokeswoman Kathy Moses.
She said the blaze still has no containment, and the 200 firefighters working on it have had a tough time getting any lines around it due to the steep, rocky terrain.
This isn't the first time wildfire has threatened the historic mission, or the relatively new school.
In August 2001, the St. Mary's Mission Fire swept through the same area and was finally contained after burning 40,000 acres.
Two years later, in July 2003, the school and homes in the area were again threatened but the fire was quickly brought under control.
Copyright 2012 - The Wenatchee World, Wash.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
