Fire report for July 5
A YTC Roter 292 fills its bucket on July 2 at Rotary Lake to help combat the Rest Haven Road fire near Selah.
COURTESY PHOTO/YAKIMA TRAINING CENTER
YAKIMA – State fire assistance has been mobilized by Washington State Patrol Chief John Batiste in response to the Rest Haven fire located in Yakima County near Selah as of Sunday.
The fire began July 2 sbetween 1 p.m. and 2 p.m., burning in brush and grass. By the end of the day Sunday, it had grown to about 400 acres and was still growing.
The fire had been extinguished by Monday shortly before noon with aid from more than half a dozen agencies, including the U.S. Army Reserve, which operated helicopters with water buckets to help douse the blaze, according to the Yakima Training Center, one of the responding agencies. The incident had caused a level three evacuation to protect area residents, but that evacuation has been canceled.
The Roza Creek Fire, which began June 27, has been put out. The Kittitas County blaze had burned just more than 700 acres, incinerating a variety of brush and short grass about 10 miles north of Selah.
The area impacted by the Roza Creek Fire will be handed over to local firefighting agencies this weekend, provided mop-up goes as planned, according to the Department of Natural Resources.
The Gold Mountain Ridge Fire, northeast of Coulee Dam, had burned a little less than 30 acres as of Monday afternoon. Containment information was not immediately available prior to press time.
A fire near the Columbia River Gorge view point across the Columbia River from Hood River Oregon had burned more than about 540 acres as of Monday afternoon.
The National Interagency Fire Center portal reported a total of more than 24,000 wildfires so far this year from small fires to thousands of acres. Together, these fires have burned more than 91,000 acres across the U.S.
Locally, at least one fire department reported an unexpectedly slower-than-normal weekend, compared to Independence Day weekends of years past.
“It was just a lot slower. There were still fireworks going on but it wasn't as concentrated as in years past,” said Grant County Fire District 5 Captain Brent Haley.
Haley said the department had gotten very few calls overall with maybe 10 fire and EMS calls combined coming in on Saturday.
“(Sunday), I think we did like, four,” Haley said.
Joel Martin contributed to this report.