Hot, Dry Weather Makes Rough-Going for Washington Wildland Firefighters
DRYDEN, Wash. (AP) -- A growing wildfire has resulted in an evacuation order for an area with roughly 400 homes in this central Washington town amid a threat of thunderstorms, temperatures approaching 100 degrees and low humidity.
``The fire likes those conditions. It makes it burn very hot, very fast,'' said Carol Tocco, spokeswoman for the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland, Ore.
The latest evacuations were ordered by Chelan County sheriff's deputies Sunday, a day after the Fischer Fire jumped a road, resulting in an evacuation warning covering at least 100 homes. Earlier evacuation orders covered about 30 homes.
In neighboring British Columbia, 70 new wildfires were reported over the weekend, including 40 burns in the eastern Fraser Valley about 70 miles east of Vancouver and one near the Hell's Gate tram, a popular tourist attraction in the Fraser Canyon north of Hope.
Firefighters reported good progress on the Fischer Fire about 20 miles northwest of Wenatchee until late Saturday afternoon, when burning debris blew across a road.
Within 15 seconds, a helicopter had dumped 1,500 gallons of water on the new burn area, but within three minutes the fire had grown by 15 acres and by Sunday morning the growth amounted to 1,000 acres for a total of 3,250 acres, more than five square miles.
The blaze, believed to be human-caused, grew both north and south so fast that as of late Sunday, fire information officer Art Tasker said he couldn't estimate how much additional land had been charred.
``It's a lot bigger, but we simply do not know,'' Tasker said. ``It's grown a lot of acres in a short period.''
More than 840 firefighters were battling the flames on private, state and national forest land. The fire was.
Elsewhere, about 280 guests and staff at Holden Village, a Christian retreat near Lake Chelan, began leaving voluntarily because of the Pot Peak-Sisi Ridge fire complex.
The evacuation began Sunday morning and was expected to be completed by Monday night, operations manager Kristofer Gilje told The Seattle Times. About 13 staff members will remain at the site, which will be closed through at least next Sunday, Gilje added.
Sheriff's deputies warned those at Holden and two nearby hamlets, Lucerne and Domke Lake, that one of the burns, the 29,500-acre Deep Harbor Fire, might advance northward toward the area.
About 585 firefighters were assigned to the Pot Peak-Sisi Ridge fires, which blackened a total of 46,970 acres and were 85 percent contained.
Near Naches, northwest of Yakima, the Mud Lake fire was contained at 4,000 acres Saturday evening, fire information officer Dale Warriner said. About 300 firefighters were mopping up on Sunday.
About 140 firefighters were fighting the lightning-cased Mebee fire, which covered 234 acres about a half-mile north of the North Cascades Highway. The road remained open, but a 20-mile section of the Pacific Crest Trail was closed.
About 70 firefighters were assigned to the lightning-caused Rattlesnake Peak fire, which has burned about 590 acres in an area about 40 miles west of Yakima that had been free from wildfires for 60 years.
Many of the blazes in British Columbia, including the fire about 4,000 feet up a mountainside near the tram, were so intense that firefighters could not get near them, officials said.
Another, the Whitecap fire, grew to about 3,200 acres by late Sunday outside Lillooet, about 110 miles northeast of Vancouver, fire information officer Tim Neal said.
With flames about 2 1/2 miles from the nearest homes, about 200 people were told to pack have their bags and be ready to leave quickly.
``It's fairly smoky in there,'' Neal said. ``This fire is so extreme we can't put crews in front of it and we haven't even been able to get crews on the ground to see what's going on.''
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