Fire chars 550 acres west of Soap Lake Saturday
Grant County Fire District No. 5 crews water down a roadside on one edge of a 550-acre near Soap Lake last Saturday afternoon.
SOAP LAKE - A fast moving brush fire scorched more than 550 acres and threatened but didn't burn structures near Adrian Road about five miles west of Soap Lake Saturday afternoon. A stretch of state Route 28 west of Soap Lake was closed for about 90 minutes while crews worked along the fire lines.
The fire burned 565 acres, but "we didn't lose a single structure," Kirk Sheppard, chief of Grant County Fire District No. 7, said. "It burned around a bunch of homes," but firefighters saved all the structures, Sheppard said.
"We did have the fire jump Highway 28," he said, but the fire stopped when it hit green space around a home. Firefighters were able to contain it to the area around the home.
Fire crews were fighting sustained winds of about 13 to 15 miles per hour as well as the fire, Sheppard said. "It (the fire) was extremely fast moving. By the time I first got here we had about 50 acres on fire," he said. Then "we had a couple of big wind shifts on us."
Sheppard said the cause of the fire wasn't known, and might never be known. "It started way out in the middle of nowhere," he said. There were no structures and no signs of activity in the vicinity, he said, but there were power lines, and the fire might have started due to an electrical problem.
Firefighters from Grant County fire districts No. 5, No. 6, No. 7, No. 12, No. 13, and the City of Ephrata responded to the fire, Sheppard said. He estimated about 40 firefighters were on scene.
It was 99 degrees with 6 percent humidity in Moses Lake at 5 p.m. Friday, which is pretty much the definition of hot and dry. Sheppard said in those conditions, people whose property is surrounded by sagebrush and grass should have "defensible space" around any buildings.
"The best thing would be a green lawn," he said; fires don't like green grass or green plants. Fire doesn't like bare ground either, and if green grass doesn't work around the property, the ground around the buildings should be cleared of vegetation, Sheppard said. Gravel or rocks around the structure also provide a fire barrier, he said.