Hot Weather, High Winds Could Worsen Fire Conditions in US West

Dozens of wildfires, including the largest on record in Washington state, roared through parts of the bone-dry U.S. West on Monday with unusually warm weather and a return of high winds expected to heighten fire risk in the Pacific Northwest later this week.

This fire season has brought unprecedented challenges with vast areas aflame simultaneously in the Rockies, the Northwest and California, said U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Christine Cozakos.

“There’s no season-ending weather event coming any time soon,” she said.

Nearly two dozen fires in Washington and Oregon have scorched more than 1 million acres (405,000 hectares), according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

The extraordinary scope of this summer’s conflagrations stretched resources thin, prompting a rare enlistment of firefighting reinforcements from the U.S. military and foreign countries.

Dozens of fire managers and firefighters from Australia and New Zealand reported to the Interagency Fire Center’s headquarters on Monday, preparing for deployment against wildfires in Washington state, Cozakos said.

About 200 U.S. Army soldiers from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma already have joined the front lines in Washington, as have crews from Canada, the Interagency Fire Center said.

In north-central Washington state, a cluster of deadly fires dubbed the Okanogan Complex has scorched more than 256,567 acres (104,000 hectares), overtaking last year’s Carlton Complex fire as the state’s largest on record.

Heavy smoke grounded water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers, preventing them from helping crews on the ground battling the flames with bulldozers and hand tools. But firefighters still managed to carve containment lines around 10 percent of the zone’s perimeter as of Monday.

Last week, three firefighters were killed and four injured in an initial assault on part of the Okanogan.

About 50 miles (80 km) to the south, around a resort town at the base of Lake Chelan, moderate winds on Monday worked in favor of firefighters struggling against a smaller complex of fires that was reported at about 40 percent containment.

But a lingering heat wave and stronger winds forecast for later in the week, following a brief respite from extremely gusty conditions, could lead to a renewed expansion of fire activity, a spokesman for fire commanders said.

In south-central Oregon, residents were ordered to evacuate from the path of the Canyon Creek Complex, formed when three fires near the community of John Day merged, threatening as many as 130 homes, the U.S. Forest Service said.