Residents help battle blaze

A 200-acre fire west of Spangle was being fought Saturday by residents and firefighters alike as winds carried flames through trees and threatened 10 structures in the area.

Ray Rhoades, his wife, Neta, their daughter, Racy Marcure, and her family helped crews dig lines around scorched earth for several hours. Rhoades said he has a farm of about 250 pigs nearly 1,000 feet from where they worked with shovels.

“We can’t move them all,” Rhoades said of the livestock, which included 100 sows and more than 150 piglets.

The fire was believed to have originated at the end of Gateway Lane off Jennings Road, three to four miles from Spangle.

“We live right there,” said Richard Marcure, Rhoades’ son-in-law, pointing behind him, a shovel in his hand. “So we want it to stay the hell over here.”

Estimates for the size of the blaze changed rapidly throughout the afternoon as fire crews were better able to map the area, said Steve Harris, a Washington Department of Natural Resources spokesman.

Seven fire districts sent personnel and vehicles to the fire, and the Department of Natural Resources sent in crews and heavy equipment. The blaze had been upgraded to a two-alarm fire around 2:20 p.m., and additional strike crews were called in.

Nearly two-dozen brush engines – smaller trucks equipped with water to hit hot spots on the edges of the fire – were on scene, along with a few water tenders, a plane and three helicopters equipped with buckets, Harris said. A crew on the ground used a Global Positioning System device to graph the area damaged.

Flames in major hot spots were 2 to 4 feet high, said Capt. Dan Walsh, a spokesman on scene from Fire District 9 in Mead. Strong winds pushed the fire at a moderate pace through more acreage, but crews were able to flank the flames and keep them in check.

Harris said structures in the area were threatened but none had caught fire, and he could not confirm a report he’d heard that some homes had been singed by flames.

Walsh said early reports that someone using a metal grinder in the area off Gateway Lane had caused the blaze had not been verified; several other reasons had been considered.

Walsh said later that a well-drilling crew was also doing work at the end of Gateway Lane but that further investigation would be needed to show what was actually to blame.

“We’ve also got slash piles out here, and lightning has struck the area,” Walsh said. “We’ve got to rule those out.”