Extreme Danger

Day 311: Tonight, the Alder Lake Fire continues in its ninth day of burning. To my eye and to the eye of my next-door neighbor, it appears to have spread up the ridge. I'll take his word for it. He was a wildland firefighter with the Department of Natural Resources for over twenty years. As we stood watching today from a vantage point on Lillie Dale Road, we could see debris rollout tumbling down a gully in tall timber, igniting the understory but not the trees themselves. "That's old growth," he told me. "Those trees don't have branches down low where the fire is. Now if it gets into that second growth, they're going to have a real problem on their hands."

I wondered why they weren't attacking from the air until reminded that there are bigger fires all across the state. This fire is small potatoes, although my neighbor explained that it's a dangerous fire because of the limits placed on the crews by terrain. He'd know. He was an Engine Leader, responsible for the safety of his team. Some years ago, he was sent out to New Mexico to help fight a major fire. He was gone two weeks, and not a day went by that I didn't wonder if he was safe. Yesterday, three firefighters lost their lives here in Washington, battling a blaze in the Twisp/Winthrop area on the east side. I am grateful that my neighbor retired from DNR, or he might well have been on the front lines.

Smokey Bear, standing in front of Rocky Point Campground, warns that fire danger is "extreme." As I sit here looking out my window at a pasture full of chest-high, dry grass and timber-covered hills behind it, I shiver. It only takes one lightning strike, or one idiot with a carelessly-tossed cigarette, and with the way the weather's been behaving, we're probably a month from a good, hard rain.