Winds blow Mill Canyon fire across lines

A sudden windstorm Monday evening caused the Mill Canyon fire to jump its lines and spread another 300 acres north along the deep canyon northeast of Davenport.

“We don’t know if it was lightning caused or a downed electrical line, but the fire started working its way down Mill Canyon,” said Dale Warriner, information officer for the state Department of Natural Resources.

As many as eight homes could now be in the fire’s path. “We evacuated a few people out,” Warriner said, but he didn’t know how many.

State and local firefighters also received reports of 15 to 18 new fires in Lincoln and Spokane counties Monday night.

“We have a lot of questions and not too many answers,” Warriner said. This morning “we’ll try to reassess what happened in the rest of the county and adopt a few of those fires into this complex.”

Some 60 state fire crews arrived Monday in an effort to relieve the local firefighters who had been battling the 1,000-acre Mill Canyon fire.

Moriah Joy, a resident of Mill Canyon Road, lives in one of the 12 houses evacuated Monday night. She said they’d been told just 45 minutes before the fire blew up that the blaze was under control.

Firefighters are bringing in 50 fire trucks today, including 25 wildland rigs, Warriner said.

Earlier Monday, smoke billowed like geysers rising out of wheat country as flames raged in a deep, rocky canyon northeast of Davenport.

Fire crews mostly remained on the sidelines and let bulldozers and aircraft battle the blaze that is burning scrub and trees inside the steep-sided canyon, which is surrounded by wheat fields.

The heavy equipment scratched fire breaks around the top of the canyon, and tanker planes and helicopters attacked with water and retardant each time the flames threatened to spread into adjacent crops, said Guy Gifford, DNR spokesman.

“The wind is pushing it north,” Gifford said.

“The north end of the fire is still out of control.”

The canyon topography is too steep, and the fire was burning too hot Monday afternoon for hand crews to attack the fire, Gifford said.

Pilots attacked the flames with a World War II-era PBY tanker carrying water from its base in Deer Park.

A larger, four-engine P-3 Orion, based in Moses Lake, dropped huge loads of red-colored flame retardant.

The big planes made strafing runs each time the fire climbed the steep sides of the canyon and threatened to escape.

Three other single-engine airplanes, a Huey helicopter and a Cobra helicopter dropped loads of water on hot spots, Gifford said.

Mill Canyon runs for several miles before opening into the Spokane River valley, about a dozen miles west of the Long Lake Dam.

Mike Greenwood, 57, who retired three years ago after 27 years teaching at Lewis and Clark High School, said the fire reached within a quarter mile of his house.

“When the fire started, I was coming home from the river. I said, ‘That looks pretty close to my house.’ ” Greenwood said. “The closer we drove, the closer it got to my house.”

Firefighters from Davenport were already battling the fire and Greenwood’s home didn’t appear to be in any danger.

“But it jumped the road, came up the other side of the canyon and within an hour it was a quarter-mile from our house,” he said.

Greenwood has a garden hose attached to a 200-gallon water tank. Armed with the water and shovels, he and another man fought to keep the fire from entering nearby timber.

They worked until 11 p.m. Sunday.

“I probably put 2,000 gallons on a small area. We thought we had it contained, but it flared up again this morning,” he said.

Greenwood said he heard the fire was started by a Coleman stove being operated by a man who lives on 20 acres in the base of the canyon. Warriner said the fire is believed to be human caused, but he didn’t know any more specifics.

The fire raced up a finger canyon between Greenwood’s homestead on 50 acres and Tolstoy Farm. Greenwood said about eight area homes would be in danger if the fire burns in the wrong direction.

He doesn’t think any of his neighbors evacuated.

“I don’t think they would anyway,” he said.

“I think we would stay and fight until we had to get the hell out.”

In fact, a neighbor told Greenwood that farmer Hal Johnson took his combine to go cut wheat in the same field where fire crews scratched a fire line.

“I don’t know if I would be taking an expensive combine out in the field in front of the fire.”