Firefighters prepare for possible wind
MAZAMA, Wash. – Fire bosses trying to rein in wildfires that have blackened hundreds of square miles in Washington braced Friday for a cold front that could bring needed moisture but also winds and lightning.
“It looks like a pretty substantial cold front is coming through on Saturday,” said meteorologist Rocco Pelatti of the National Weather Service’s Spokane office. “It will bring either a lot of wind or a lot of clouds and rain.”
Temperatures in the low 90s on Friday were expected to drop 15-20 degrees, with increasing wind speeds and humidity across the region, the Weather Service reported.
A red flag warning for dry lightning and hazardous fire conditions was issued Friday for the area around the Blue Mountains in the state’s southeastern corner, near the Columbia complex of fires.
More than 3,000 firefighters were assigned Friday to the Columbia complex and Tripod complex, the two largest wildfire clusters in the state.
The lightning-caused Columbia complex near Dayton has blackened 154 square miles of wheat fields, brush and forest in southeastern Washington and was 50 percent contained.
In north-central Washington, firefighters continued to battle the massive Tripod complex about seven miles northwest of Winthrop. One of three wildfires in the Pasayten Wilderness Area, the Tripod complex has burned more than 258 square miles.
At its northern flank, the fire was burning more than a mile south of the Canadian border. No structures were immediately threatened, and the blaze was 56 percent contained.
The Tatoosh complex, 18 miles northwest of Mazama, was estimated at 37,360 acres – about 58 square miles – and extended into Canada. U.S. and Canadian fire managers also were monitoring the Van Peak fire, which was burning between the Tripod and Tatoosh fires about five miles south of the border.
Residents in Mazama remained on notice to be ready to evacuate if the Cedar Creek fire grows. That blaze, estimated at about two square miles – or 1,450 acres – southwest of town, was 40 percent contained.
Farther south in north-central Washington, some residents in the remote hamlet of Stehekin at the north end of Lake Chelan were warned they might have to flee the Flick Creek fire. The fire, estimated at 6,397 acres, has been threatening the town intermittently since it was accidentally started by a campfire July 26.
The Chelan County Sheriff’s Office on Friday ordered the mandatory evacuation of three vacation homes in the Hazard Creek drainage, about a mile south of Stehekin Landing on the lake’s northeastern shore, fire spokeswoman Betty Higgins said.
The Tinpan fire in the Glacier Peak Wilderness grew to 8,113 acres, or more than 12 square miles. About 108 firefighters were assigned to the blaze.
Because of poor air quality from wildfire smoke in the region, the regional office of the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Friday ordered a ban on outdoor burning on four Indian reservations.
The ban covers the Colville and Kalispel reservations in Washington, Idaho’s Fort Hall Indian Reservation and the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon.