LUCERNE – More than 150 guests from across the country fled Holden Village near Lake Chelan on Sunday, as officials worried the advancing Deep Harbor Fire could cut off access to the Lutheran retreat.
Jim Smith of Forest Lake, Minn., said he was disappointed – until he rode past the fire on the Lady of the Lake II and saw the heavy smoke.
“It was the right decision to leave,” he said, surrounded by luggage at Fields Point Landing after stepping off the boat with his wife and children.
Chelan County Sheriff Mike Harum declared a voluntary evacuation for Lucerne, Domke Lake and Holden Village at 10 p.m. Saturday, after the fire’s northern edge crawled over a ridge and sent burning debris rolling downhill to Bear Creek.
If the fire reaches the small cluster of vacation homes at Lucerne and the campgrounds around Domke Lake, it would cut off the 11-mile gravel road up Railroad Creek to Holden Village, a Lutheran-affiliated retreat with about 270 guests and staff on Sunday.
“The fire could run quickly, and your only escape would be that road,” said fire spokesman Scott Crawford. “They’re just not taking any chances, which is a real good idea.”
Crawford said the fire made no dramatic runs, but steadily climbed the ridge south of Bear Creek in recent days. In the hot, dry weather, water dropped from helicopters had little effect, he said.
When debris started rolling down from the crest of the ridge toward Bear Creek, leaving trails of fire behind on the hillside, it crossed a line that fire officials had already decided should trigger a Level 2 evacuation, where residents are encouraged to leave or at least begin packing.
Dianne Shiner, co-director of Holden Village, said the staff was prepared to evacuate the village in a few hours in a fire emergency.
The staff will leave today, she said, with a few staying behind to protect the property.
Elaine Smith, a guest from Paradise, Calif., said everyone stayed calm.
“It was extremely thorough, extremely well-planned,” said Rev. Ed Evans of Vancouver, Wash., who spent two weeks at the camp and was planning to spend another two there.
He said many were sad to leave.
“There was a lot of emotion there this morning – a lot of tears I noticed during the worship service,” Evans said. “It’s like family there.”
The fire had grown to 29,700 acres by Monday morning and was 80 percent contained.
Weather no relief for Dryden fire
\The Wenatchee World and Associated Press
DRYDEN – Firefighters largely escaped the dry thunderstorms and lightning predicted for central Washington over the weekend, but continued high temperatures and a new round of storms were forecast.
The latest weather prediction was bad news for crews battling a half-dozen blazes across the state, and for the hundreds of residents who remain evacuated from their homes.
About 275 homes remained evacuated Monday near Dryden in north central Washington after the Fischer fire jumped fire lines over the weekend and grew to 6,400 acres.
A single ember blew across a critical fire line, touching off an inferno that forced hundreds from their homes and escalated the Fischer Fire to the No. 1 priority in the nation on Sunday.
“We are at the mercy of the (fire) event right now,” said Glenn Hoffman, ranger of the Lake Wenatchee and Leavenworth Ranger districts. “We’ve got explosive burning conditions.”
More than a dozen rural canyons stretching eastward from Cashmere to Leavenworth and north up the Chumstick Valley were under varying levels of evacuation notice, with 405 homes and about 800 people affected. No structures have been lost.
“We cannot predict which direction the fire is going to go,” said Bob Anderson, commander of the national fire management team that took over on Saturday. “We expect significant fire spread.”
He said above-normal temperatures, years of drought and extremely dry forest conditions have created a volatile fire situation on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains.
“This fire has the potential to go clear to the Columbia River, clear to Entiat Ridge and clear up the Chumstick,” he told a crowd of more than 150 people who attended an informational meeting Sunday afternoon.
The crowd gasped at the statement, some shaking their heads or hugging family members.
About 1,170 firefighters were assigned to the fire, which officials earlier had estimated at 30 percent containment.
The good news was a light northwest wind that was pushing the fire back on itself, aiding in the firefighting effort, said Carol Tocco, spokeswoman for the Northwest Coordination Center in Portland, Ore.
The forecast, however, called for temperatures as high as 100 degrees, low humidity and increasing winds with the threat of thunderstorms through today, said Robin DeMario, fire information officer.
“We only had four lightning strikes show up this weekend, and we’re really grateful,” DeMario said. “But there’s still potential for lightning storms this week.”
The human-caused fire that started Aug. 8 has repelled firefighting efforts from the start, jumping fire lines almost daily.
Firefighters had been able to hold the northern flank of the fire at Derby Canyon Road until late Saturday evening, when a single burning ember crossed over.
Although two helicopters quickly made back-to-back drops of water on the spot fire, it grew to 15 acres within a minute and 50 acres within five minutes, Anderson said. It torched more than 500 acres within an hour and by evening had traveled two miles north to threaten residences along Eagle Creek.
As the national priority, the fire has top billing for fire crews, aircraft and other resources, Anderson said. But it was little comfort to fire managers on Sunday as the wind-driven fire spread at will.
“We don’t need another retardant drop. We don’t need more water. We don’t need more firefighters,” Anderson said. “What we need is some help from the weather.”
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