GOLD BAR — The wildfire that burned across hundreds of acres and triggered evacuation notices this weekend between Gold Bar and Index has been fully contained.
Crews also have finished setting up containment lines around another fire near Oso and are working on beating the flames back to 100 feet inside of those lines.
There are 16 crews, totaling 350 people, at work fighting the first two Snohomish County wildfires of what is expected to be a bad fire season, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
Homes no longer are threatened by either fire. All evacuation notices have been rescinded. The causes of both fires are under investigation.
The Proctor Creek fire, which was spotted Friday on private logging land between Gold Bar and Index, was estimated at 352 acres on Monday. Better mapping and ongoing efforts by firefighters have knocked that estimate down to 289 acres. Tuesday’s goal for fire crews was to continue putting out flames around the edges of the fire to widen the buffer and prevent the blaze from spreading.
The Hot Shot fire was discovered near Oso on Thursday, burning across steep, hazardous logging land. It covered up to 130 acres over the weekend but was knocked down to 67 acres by Monday and remained that size Tuesday morning. Firefighters have the Hot Shot blaze 75 percent contained, up from 50 percent on Monday. Teams were working Tuesday morning on creating a 100-foot buffer within the containment lines.
“We’re winding things down here,” incident information officer Randy Shepard said. “We anticipate that in the next couple of days we’ll be able to hand things back over to the regular agencies.”
Kari Bray: 425-339-3439; kbray@heraldnet.com
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