WENATCHEE – A cold front that is expected to arrive tonight could pack winds capable of whipping the Fischer fire over established fire lines and east toward Wenatchee, fire weather experts said Friday.
“We’ve got a weather event coming that’s making people pretty nervous,” fire spokesman Mick Mueller said.
The front is expected to hit this evening and could bring sustained winds ranging from 20 mph to 30 mph, with gusts up to 40 mph, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Coleen Decker.
More than 300 homes had been under mandatory evacuation but that order was lifted Friday night for portions of Derby and Williams canyons and a small portion of Hay canyon, allowing an unspecified number of residents to return home, said fire information officer Art Tasker.
Hundreds of residents remained on notice that they might have to flee quickly from the fire 20 miles northwest of Wenatchee.
Although winds in the area hit 20 mph Friday evening, the fire “behaved reasonably well,” Tasker said.
By comparison, the winds that caused the fire’s rapid spread on Tuesday across canyons near Cashmere blew at 8 mph with 12- to15-mph gusts, fire camp meteorologist Bob Tobin said.
“The fire has showed us a couple of times it’s capable of making runs of several miles at a time,” fire incident commander Bob Anderson said. “No one should take the fire for granted.”
Anderson and other officials at their Leavenworth-area headquarters this morning expressed confidence that they would finish a loop of fire breaks around the blaze before the cold front arrives tonight.
There are about 30 miles of fire breaks, or about 40 percent of what’s needed to encircle the fire.
“This 800-pound gorilla has been beating us down,” Anderson told about 200 firefighters at a 6 a.m. fire planning meeting Friday. “Now we’ve got it down, and I want you to kick its ass.”
Still, fire officials fear the weekend winds could push the fire out of Hay Canyon, where it’s been holding since Tuesday night.
With the front approaching, spokesman Jon Kohn said, it leaves firefighters “one more day before the lines are tested in all directions by wind.”
National Weather Service meteorologists predict high temperatures will drop some 20 degrees into the high 70s late Sunday from the mid- to upper-90s Friday.
Showers and cooler weather forecast through Thursday could slow the fire, but also spark thunderstorms, Tobin said.
“If we make it through the windy condition we expect over the weekend, and if showers come, winds will decrease and that will be a help to firefighters,” Tobin said. “But it’s a double-edged sword, because the low pressure can cause thunderstorms and increased winds.”
The area’s topography, cross-hatched by a network of rugged canyons, enhances winds and forces them down the Wenatchee River Valley, Tobin said.
Today’s winds are expected to come out of the southwest, then shift to west and northwest at the ridgetops by Sunday morning.
Anderson, who described the battle as “a 15-round slugfest,” said complex canyon drainages, dry fuel and wind patterns make the Fischer fire unpredictable and hard to fight.
“The worst could still be ahead,” he said. “We now have a lot more fire spread across a lot larger landscape and more opportunity for the fire to squirt out in any direction.”
Paul Werth, fire weather meteorologist at the Northwest Interagency Fire Coordination Center in Portland, Ore., said unstable air could also lead to smoke plumes – billowing columns of smoke that can rise more than 30,000 feet into the air, carried by air heated near ground level by the fire.
The plume cools as it rises, Werth said, sometimes causing it to collapse onto itself and sink very quickly back to earth, creating its own weather patterns, including wind gusts that could exceed 50 mph and drop directly onto the fire.
Decker said a smoke plume carried by the hot air from the Fischer fire hit 40,000 feet on Sunday. An earlier estimate pegged the plume at 24,000 feet. Once the air cooled, it needed only 10 minutes to fall from 35,000 feet to 15,000 feet, but then stabilized and dispersed before it reached the ground.
Associated Press
Edward Wright, the leader of a Kitsap County task force, sprays foam on a home about five miles up Ollala Canyon while a backburn is started in the area on Thursday.
Homes in fire’s path are wrapped in foil
Wenatchee World
NAHAHUM CANYON – Thump, thump, thump, thump.
That was the sound Thursday afternoon as firefighters from the Arden Fire Department in Stevens County used staple guns to put a foil material on Nahahum Canyon homes threatened by the Fischer fire.
Structure protection crews have been stapling sheets of a fiberglass foil laminate over windows, doors and other potential fire entry points on homes in Ollala and Nahahum canyons.
Firefighters also used spray-on foam to protect houses from approaching flames, fire spokesman Mick Mueller said. The same foam is sprayed on hot-spot areas after a fire has rolled through, fire spokesman Glenn Bell said.
The foil comes in rolls 300 feet long and 4 feet wide. Firefighter Michael Mace said the foil is an important part of structure-protection efforts. He and two other firefighters cut back weeds and brush around a home about four miles up the canyon on Thursday afternoon before applying the foil.
They used the foil to cover an opening below a small deck near the home’s front door.
“You don’t want the fire to get under the deck, because after that it could easily make it all the way to the home,” Mace said.
They put extra foil in one spot where the homeowner had planted a juniper bush about 5 feet from the home.
“Juniper is a common landscape plant we’re seeing up here,” Mace said. “It’s also one of the most flammable. It’s basically like having gasoline right next to your house.”
The only thing that slowed Mace and the other firefighters was running out of staples. They were able to get more from another crew.
“We have a lot of people out here doing structure protection, and the supply people have a hard time keeping up with us,” Mace said.
Wenatchee World
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
