Pacific Northwest Fires Rage Through 60,000 Acres

Wildfires raged across more than 60,000 acres of Oregon and Washington state Wednesday, forcing the evacuation of several hundred people and burning homes, officials said.

The Tyee Creek fire burning in central Washington’s Wenatchee National Forest had grown to 20,000 acres, said Roberta Hillbruner, spokeswoman for the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland.

Authorities evacuated 400 people from their homes in the Entiat Valley, where at least 13 homes burned, she said. No one was reported injured.

Gov. Mike Lowry, who observed the fire from the air on Wednesday, was told the blaze could grow to cover 50,000 acres before it is contained.

In north-central Oregon, a range fire on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation exploded from 11,000 to 25,000 acres overnight. The fire destroyed one house and forced the evacuation of residents from 50 other homes near the Kah-Nee-Ta Lodge.

There was no estimate of when either fire would be contained.

Crews also fought 11 other major fires in Washington and seven in Oregon, Hillbruner said, in addition to numerous smaller fires. A total of 3,500 state, federal and tribal firefighters have been deployed in the two states.

The fires included a cluster of four fires burning on more than 3,000 acres of the Yakima Indian Reservation in central Washington, a 6,400-acre range fire near the John Day River in central Oregon and a 3,900-acre forest fire in the Kalmiopsis Wilderness of southwestern Oregon.

“We received 3,500 lightning strikes Sunday night,” Hillbruner said. “That’s what touched off the fires. It has been hot, dry and windy. The fires are on a rampage.”

Gov. Lowry declared a state of emergency Tuesday night after receiving word of the destruction caused by the Tyee Creek fire.

Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts invoked the state’s Conflagration Act, which allowed her to order local fire departments to send personnel and equipment to assist federal and state firefighters.

In California, workers built firebreaks Wednesday around the largest set of fires remaining from a series touched off by dry lightning in the Klamath National Forest.

All told, more than 6,200 acres were burned in the state and roughly 1,600 firefighters were at work.