Fire crews save homes at Harker Canyon

DAVENPORT – Propped on a rocky precipice, Mike Ellsworth stared down into the leading edge of the cantankerous Harker Canyon fire and choreographed efforts to keep the blaze from escaping over a ridge and destroying the summer homes below.

Ellsworth, a captain at Spokane County Fire District 4, was working Thursday as a division supervisor for the interagency effort battling the fire. More than 300 firefighters from across Washington came to fight the blaze, located about seven miles northeast of Davenport.

The Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, a clearinghouse for fire information, said the fire had burned 840 acres by Thursday evening. Crews on the ground had estimated 2,000 acres.

As Ellsworth barked orders into his radio, fire crews scratched lines, a bulldozer scraped fire breaks and massive four-engine P-3 tanker planes disgorged belly loads of red fire retardant.

“Lead 6-8, that was perfect. Nice drop. Wonderful,” Ellsworth advised the pilot of a P-3 that thundered about 100 feet overhead and descended down into a smoky valley, where it dropped a load of retardant on flames that threatened to break out of containment.

Pushed by wind, the fire, which was ignited Wednesday by a farm truck in a wheat field near Harker Canyon, raced later the same evening to the ridge overlooking about 30 homes along Moccasin Bay, on the south shore of the Spokane Arm of Lake Roosevelt.

John Sawyer, 68, said he came around the bend of the lake in his boat Wednesday night and saw that the fire had crossed the road and raced east up the far ridge of Mill Canyon, which was scorched by a large fire further north last summer.

“I thought, ‘Oh man. We are not going to have a house,’ ” Sawyer said.

After taking up garden hoses with his neighbor, Don Clayville, Sawyer slept on his houseboat. Clayville, who has the house highest on the ridge overlooking the bay, slept in his pickup next to Sawyer’s boat.

“I figured everything was gone when it came over that hill,” Clayville said. “But it just stopped.”

By Thursday morning, crews lit backfires up the ridge, stopping the blaze and saving the homes. Clayville, Sawyer and a group of friends celebrated before lunch Thursday by drinking mixers of Black Velvet and Diet Pepsi out of red Solo cups.

“That was way too close for comfort,” Sawyer said. “We sure appreciate the firefighters. They are just awesome.”