Crews smothering Lake Chelan fires

By Ian Ith
Seattle Times staff reporter

JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES With tinder-dry brush surrounding him, firefighter Matt Dykema watches for hot spots in the distance at the Pot Peak Fire near Chelan yesterday. Dykema is a member of the Baker River Hotshots, based in Sedro-Woolley, Skagit County.

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Related stories Winds likely to fan two fires near Chelan

The same cold front that dropped pleasant summer showers on the Seattle area this week became a pest to firefighters east of the Cascades, who have watched the Beebe fire on one end of Lake Chelan threaten dozens of homes, while on the other, the high-mountain Pot Peak blaze crackled and smoldered out of control.

But the wind-whipped fires also have brought more than 1,100 firefighters and veteran support crews to the campgrounds and fire camps of Lake Chelan, appearing from nowhere within mere hours as miniature cities of yurts, pup tents and trailers.

The teams already have largely tamed the worst of the danger.

"It's really good news, excellent news," said Nick Mickel, a state Department of Natural Resources spokesman overseeing the Beebe fire just outside Chelan. The fire raced through sage and grassland for at least three days, forcing some 45 families to briefly flee their houses — all because a hungry owl hit a power line after snatching a baby bird from a nest.

	JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES Firefighters work to contain a section of the Pot Peak Fire yesterday near Chelan in Chelan County.

Officials said both fires have served as excellent real-life experience for a wildfire season that has started too early and by most accounts could be one of the busiest and most problematic because of ongoing drought and warm weather.

"It burned through here really fast, but it burned itself out," Mickel said. "The majority of that was strictly thanks to the firefighters, but a lot of it was the luck of the draw, and how the cards were dealt."

As of yesterday afternoon, the Beebe fire was more than half contained, and residents had been allowed back to their homes. More than 150 firefighters were working to smother hot spots and ensure that homes were buffered. Barring any new winds, the range fire is expected to be fully contained by the end of today.

Some 30 miles north at the Pot Peak fire above Twenty-Five Mile Creek, work was slower and progress measured in smaller victories.

Still, a camp of some 950 men and women was told last night that the most critical containment work would be complete by the end of the week, and some of the highly trained, experienced firefighting teams would likely be able to go home.

But it hasn't been without a fight.

	Roger Hale, 90, watches from his back yard as helicopters drop water on the nearby Pot Peak Fire. A team of firefighters surrounded his house yesterday to fend off attack.

At the base camp for the Pot Peak fire, a bustling village high above the lake, a huge map in a headquarters tent yesterday showed that what started with a 30-acre kindle after a lightning strike June 24 had spread to encompass 7,200 acres, with an estimated firefighting cost so far of about $4.6 million.

Hundreds of firefighters, a dozen helicopters, five bulldozers, 19 water-tanker trucks and 31 fire engines have crisscrossed the hillsides and traversed the logging switchbacks trying to cut, dig, wet and burn a miles-long circle around the fire.

Even when the circle is complete, at a cost of around $12 million, it was estimated yesterday that the fire would eventually cover 17,000 acres of forest land and probably keep simmering in the hills until the first snows of winter, said Mike Ferris, a U.S. Forest Service spokesman.

"But it would be a lot more expensive if it ran down to the lake and burned up the expensive homes," Ferris said.

The grand plan has been to stop the fire before it crowned the key ridgelines and descended unchecked into the lake valley. So far, so good, firefighters said. And no one has been seriously injured.

High on a ridge overlooking Pot Peak yesterday, Kurt Dykema, 34, a veteran firefighter from Concrete, Skagit County, tended a controlled burn on a hillside that plummeted steeply into the burning valley below.

It is hot, hard work, he acknowledged. And complicated. Part of the Pot Peak fire's perniciousness has been the maze of steep ravines and hidden washes that define the landscape.

"But the big thing about today was the wind; that was the concern," said the 14-year veteran of the Baker River Hot Shots. "This fire is just swirling around. So I can't tell you what it's going to do next, because I don't know what the wind is going to do. There's no two fires alike."

Dykema said he arrived at the fire in its infancy and watched it spread exponentially despite his crew's best .

"It just goes to show you that as hard as we work, sometimes it isn't enough," he said.

The arrival of a firefighting camp is a spectacle in its own right. With hours' notice, hundreds of people descended on Chelan to occupy small plots of bare, unwired and unplumbed land.

And within half a day or less, they erected what amounts to cities larger in population than many of the orchard towns in the valley below.

At the Pot Peak fire, for example, the crews had to establish sanitation facilities, a chow line to feed hundreds and a clinic to treat dehydration, bee stings, back aches and twisted ankles — or worse. Yesterday alone, the camp went through 1,344 bottles of water and served about 875 chicken-and-pasta dinners.

"If we're not set up and fully functional in 14 hours, if we're not serving dinner and developing plans, we're disappointed," said Bob Thomas, the deputy logistics chief.

When this crew has done its time on the Pot Peak fire, Thomas said, he would be disappointed if the camp hasn't vanished within six hours.

It's famously reported around here that when the Army wants to learn a thing or two about running a camp, they come looking to Thomas for advice.

But in a hand-built house, perched lonely but cheerfully miles up Twenty-Five Mile Creek, Roger Hale spent the day watching all the fuss with mild amusement.

He was born in this valley — 91 years ago come Christmas. And he has lived in this same house, with a sweeping view of the valley below, since 1936 — when there was nothing here but "rattlesnakes and dust," he says.

Hale raised six children and three stepchildren here. He put in his own generator, brought in his own creek-fed water supply, and set up his own sprinkler system to keep wildfires off the critical parts of his 160 acres.

Yesterday, his home was surrounded by a team of firefighters in bright yellow shirts, swollen hoses at the ready to fend off attack. Hale sat on the front porch, a swarm of hummingbirds jetting around his yard. And he smiled as he recalled how he and his brother used to ride horses up the bluff, armed only with shovels and picks, to fight off wildfires.

Of course, that was back when his legs weren't so tired and he still had horses.

And there weren't nearly 1,000 firefighters, a dozen helicopters with 1,000-gallon water buckets and 31 shiny fire engines willing to do the job for him.

"That used to be a lot of fun, chasing those spot fires around," Hale said. "But when I went to fight these fires, we went to put them out. Now they seem to just go out and piddle them out. But, they say they know what they're doing."

Ian Ith: 206-464-2109 or iith@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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