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 Authorities late Thursday ordered the immediate evacuation of the
small community of Tonasket, nestled along the bank of the Okanogan
River in north-central Washington, impacting about 1,000 people.
On Wednesday, some 4,000 households in the riverfront towns of Twisp
and Winthrop, in the foothills of the Cascade mountains about 75
miles (120 km) southwest of Tonasket, were also forced to flee the
encroaching blaze.
The Twisp blaze is just one of more than 70 large wildfires or
clusters of fires in several drought-stricken Western states, the
bulk of them in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, California and Montana,
the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise reported.
Dozens of homes have been reduced to ruins in Idaho and Oregon in
recent days.
 The fires have stretched civilian firefighting resources, prompting
authorities to call the U.S. Army and Canadian crews to help, as
well as mobilize personnel from Australia and New Zealand for the
first time since 2008. Seventy-one fire managers and specialists
from those two countries were due to arrive in Idaho on Aug. 23.
U.S. wildland blazes have claimed the lives of at least 13
firefighters and support personnel so far this year, four more than
died in the line of duty during all of 2014, the interagency fire
center said.
President Barack Obama has directed his administration to consult
with local and state officials while the threat persists.
ERRATIC WINDS COMPLICATE EFFORTS
The Twisp blaze has proven the deadliest. Three U.S. Forest Service
firefighters in an engine crew died on Wednesday while battling the
flames, which overtook their position after they were involved in a
vehicle accident, Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers said.
Among the dead was Thomas Zbyszewski, a physics major and actor at
Whitman College in southeastern Washington. Four other firefighters
were injured, one of them hospitalized in critical condition with
burns over 60 percent of his body.
The Twisp-area fire, part of a larger cluster of fires dubbed the
Okanogan Complex, has burnt 7,873 acres (3,194 hectares) of rural
brush and dry timber about 115 miles (185 km) northeast of Seattle
since erupting on Wednesday, said Rick Scriven, a spokesman
authorized to speak about the blaze.
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As of late Thursday afternoon, crews had yet to establish firm
containment lines around the blaze, Scriven said, adding that
suppression efforts across the Northwest had been complicated by
"sporadic and erratic winds."
The blaze near Twisp was burning in Okanogan County, the same area
impacted by last July's massive Carlton Complex fire, the state's
largest on record, which destroyed about 300 homes as it blackened
250,000 acres (100,000 hectares).
About 50 miles (80 km) south of Twisp, the so-called First Creek
fire was posing a renewed threat to populated areas after engulfing
more than 68,000 acres (27,000 hectares), with 39 homes and 28
outbuildings destroyed days ago near the resort town of Chelan,
according to sheriff's spokesman Rich Magnussen.
The First Creek blaze jumped containment lines on Wednesday evening,
triggering road closures and prompting authorities to extend
evacuation orders to some 800 people, Magnussen said.
Speaking in Chelan, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told
reporters his agency expects to exhaust its firefighting budget by
early September but said necessary funds and assets would continue
to be made available where needed.
The governors of Oregon and Idaho joined Washington state in calling
up state National Guard troops backed by military aircraft to help
combat blazes.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle and Curtis Skinner in San
Francisco; Additional reporting by Shelby Sebens in Portland, Oregon
and Victoria Cavaliere in Los Angeles; Editing by Eric Walsh and
Jeremy Laurence)
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