Dry heat fuels region’s fires

A brush fire driven by gusty winds prompted an order to evacuate about 30 homes Saturday in the Warm Springs Canyon area west of Wenatchee.

The fire was reported about 2:15 p.m. near the Highline Canal and had covered about 250 acres of brush and sage by Saturday evening.

About 200 homes were threatened by the fire, and at least two outbuildings were damaged, Chelan County Sheriff Mike Harum said.

The fire’s cause was not immediately known, Harum said.

About 100 firefighters, plus retardant-dropping aircraft, were on the scene, said Jim Duck, operations coordinator for the Central Washington Interagency Dispatch Center.

Another fire came within a couple hundred yards of homes in Cloverland, Wash., said David Brown, incident commander of the fire. Cloverland is southwest of Clarkston.

Brown said the blaze, which is named for Rockpile Creek, was “extremely active” Saturday and grew to about 5,000 acres of private grazing land and state Fish and Wildlife property. It was first reported on Friday.

About 150 firefighters were on scene Saturday evening. The cause is under investigation.

Meanwhile, a brush fire that started early Saturday near the old mining town of Nighthawk in northeastern Washington near the Canadian border grew to about 1,000 acres.

About 100 firefighters, supported by U.S. and Canadian aircraft, battled the fire near Nighthawk, just west of Oroville, said Lynn Kenworthy, a dispatch supervisor with the state Department of Natural Resources. The fire, named after Little Chopaka Mountain, was burning in grass, sage and scattered timber on federal Bureau of Land Management land, and no structures were threatened.

No figure was immediately available for what percentage of the fire was contained, but retardant drops significantly slowed its progress, Kenworthy said.

“We don’t know if that’s going to hold through the night, but it’s looking good,” she said.

The fire’s cause was not immediately available.

A small brush fire that started Friday night near Tieton in Yakima County was contained by midday Saturday. The 4-acre fire destroyed a warehouse.

No injuries had been reported at any of the fires.

Idaho

Workers with Idaho Power raced to repair one of the company’s major substations and transmission lines leading to it on Saturday after they were damaged by a fast-moving wildfire.

They were trying to have the system up and running ahead of increased demand that comes with the start of the work week and avert “rotating outages.”

The company’s Mid-Point Substation in Southern Idaho was knocked out Friday when a wildfire destroyed 43 power poles, one of them toppling on the substation and destroying a transformer, Jeff Beaman, director of corporate communications, told the Associated Press.

He said crews expected to have the substation repaired late Saturday but had no estimate for when power poles that carry transmission lines could be up. He said five crews with a total of about 30 workers were trying to replace the 50-foot poles, sometimes having to blast holes in areas thick with lava rock.

The fire that caused the damage, the Red Bridge fire, by Saturday evening had increased to 45,000 acres but was contained by about 4 p.m., said Barbara Bassler, an information officer with the Bureau of Land Management.

“We had some pretty heavy winds come through here but the lines seem to be holding,” Bassler said. “We are cautiously optimistic we’re going to see this containment hold.”

About 200 firefighters helped contain the blaze Saturday, Bassler said, and were aided by air tanker retardant drops.

The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise reported the Red Bridge fire was one of 11 new fires in Idaho that started since Friday.

Bassler said the Black Pine fire about 11 miles southeast of Malta had grown to 22,000 acres late Saturday but had no information about when it might be contained.

The Black Hawk fire seven miles east of Idaho Falls had burned more than 5,000 acres and also forced evacuations.

Montana

Slightly cooler weather slowed the growth Saturday of a 3,157-acre wildfire sparked by lightning in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area west of Choteau, Mont., but dry, scorching heat was expected to return.

Crews took advantage of the brief respite to drop water on the Fool Creek fire’s east side but were still mainly observing the wilderness blaze and not actively intervening, spokeswoman Punky Moore said.

Three U.S. Forest Service cabins were threatened by the fire. Two of them had been fireproofed, and crews were headed to the third Saturday, she said.

“We’re still expecting moderate fire growth through the next four or five days as the warming trend returns,” she said. “It will steadily warm up again, and we’ll see the same kind of torching and spotting we saw initially.”

In southwestern Montana, firefighters aided by rain and an air tanker stopped a blaze 29 miles southwest of Dillon from spreading.

The Bachelor fire burned about 100 acres of Bureau of Land Management property about two miles northwest of Bachelor Mountain, fire information officer Jack de Golia said. Lightning ignited the blaze earlier Saturday.

Lightning from a storm Friday night started 17 fires in the Bitterroot National Forest and surrounding areas, but all were smaller than an acre and about half had been controlled by early Saturday evening, spokeswoman Nan Christianson said.

One other fire was sparked by a downed power line, and another was human-caused, she said.

Three small fires also were burning Saturday in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park. The largest at 20 acres was about nine miles east of Fishing Bridge in an area of heavy old growth spruce and fir, park spokesman Al Nash said.

Ten firefighters were working to keep it contained to a meadow and areas burned in 1988 and 1994, he said.

All three fires were sparked by lightning, and none were threatening park visitors or structures, Nash said.