Winter Wildfire Threatens Town

Fire crews pulled back Tuesday night as darkness fell and a windwhipped winter wildfire burned to within a quarter mile of this small Cascade foothills town.

“A small front of flames was coming down toward the town. It’s just a few hundred feet wide and slow,” state Department of Natural Resources spokesman Lloyd Handlos said late Tuesday night.

He predicted fire engine crews could extinguish the spot fire easily when it reached them.

Although winds gusted at 40 to 50 miles an hour at higher elevations, not much wind reached the town, which is protected by a hill, he said. The community of several hundred people is about 30 miles southeast of Seattle.

No homes were immediately threatened Tuesday night. Some residents left their homes as a precaution although no evacuations were ordered.

Flames burned to within 200 yards of the Cumberland Grocery store, owned by Dave Eikum.

“I’m just going to wait it out,” Eikum said Tuesday. “We don’t know what the winds are going to do. “It’s nerve-racking,” he said. “This is my livelihood and it could all be gone in seconds.”

Most of the 253 state and local firefighters who fought the Massey Gate blaze Tuesday were pulled back when the sun went down because of the danger of trees blowing down in high winds on a moonless night.

Temperatures were forecast in the 20s overnight and the cold would freeze firefighters’ pipes and pumps, said DNR spokeswoman Mary Huels.

Only 20 wildfire fighters and four bulldozers remained on the lines overnight, said Handlos.

Fire engines and crews were positioned to protect homes and other buildings that could be affected by hot embers carried by the wind, Handlos said.

Fire officials stopped worrying about a group of homes near Walker Lake, which was threatened earlier, when the fire burned west rather than south toward the development.

The fire was pegged at 185 acres Tuesday night, about four times as big as the DNR estimated earlier in the day. However, DNR spokesman Don Theoe said the larger figure likely resulted from more accurate reporting, rather than an expansion of the affected area.

Winter fires are unusual in Western Washington because “most of the time the fuels are too wet,” DNR’s Dick Stender said.