|
 The full fleet of 20 large fire engines, to be deployed to hot
spots threatening homes, and 10 water tankers will arrive at
Fairchild Air Force Base outside Spokane before Tuesday, officials
said.
Overall, there were 24 large wildfires or clusters of fires burning
across Washington state and Oregon on Sunday, among the nearly 70
blazes raging in Idaho, California and Montana, the National
Interagency Fire Center in Boise reported.
President Barack Obama has signed a federal declaration of emergency
for Washington state, and authorities have called in reinforcements
from abroad.
As of Sunday, the fires in Washington alone have blackened more than
590,000 acres (238,800 hectares) and destroyed more than 200 homes,
according to Governor Jay Inslee's office.
 In the state's north-central area, a cluster of blazes burning in
Okanogan County swelled some 12,500 acres (5,059 hectares) to
239,733 acres (97,016 hectares) on Sunday from the day prior and was
just 10 percent contained, a fire official said.
Softer winds on Sunday allowed firefighters to strengthen
containment lines around the flames as evacuation orders for
affected areas were reduced, a fire information officer assigned to
the so-called Okanogan Complex said. Crews, however, were bracing
for hot, dry, windy forecasts from late Monday.
The complex includes the Twisp River fire, which killed three
firefighters and injured four others on Wednesday night after
forcing thousands of households to evacuate in the towns of Twisp
and Winthrop.
[to top of second column] |
About 40 miles (64 km) to the south, in the area of a resort town at
the base of Lake Chelan, another fire cluster has charred 86,400
acres (34,965 hectares), growing by about 1,000 acres from Saturday.
It was about a third contained.
Some 1,000 residents remained under evacuated orders on Sunday,
though sheriff's deputies have been escorting some residents back
for property checks, said Rico Smith, a fire information officer for
the team fighting the blaze.
Heavy smoke hung over the central Washington region, and the state's
health department said flames may burn an area in the northeast that
was once a uranium mine on the Spokane Reservation, but it will not
make the smoke in the surrounding area any more toxic.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Sandra Maler)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
