Chelan County officials get first hand look at the regions largest wildland fire

Aerial photo of Pomas Fire. Photo courtesy: Wenatchee-Okanogan National Forest.

A briefing was given Monday to the Chelan County Commissioners on the largest of the wildland fires in the region, the Pomas Fire, northwest of Entiat. The fire continues to smolder in rural, steep terrain in the Glacier Peaks Wilderness area, inaccessible to firefighters.

As of Monday, the fire had consumed an estimated 2,415 acres.

"The fire continues to spread up into those drainages, and right now it's really just burning in the lower one-third of the slope where the fuel is available," said Operations Chief Chris Orr. "A pretty strong belief that barriers will hold and fully intend with the approval of the Forest Service to reinforce that with aviation and retardant as needed."

"We put 377,000 gallons of water on that fire," John Spencer with the Chelan-Entiat Ranger District said when describing the firefighting effort since the fire began June 13.. "The scoopers dropped 126 times. The helicopters dropped 263 times and we didn't even slow it down."

"I just want to put perspective there," Spencer shared. "The fire was spotting in all directions, east, west, north, and to the south."

"We drew a line in the sand just to the south of the fire," Spencer said in detailing the initial fire fight. "We said if it crosses this point it is going to jeopardize the safety of all of our resources because they would have nowhere to go. A jump spot was their safety zone, it was a meadow, and an hour later they called and said they had spots below their jump spot, their camping area, and they were compromised."

"This (fire briefing) was very valuable for me," Chelan County Commissioner Kevin Overbay said. "Just to know what transpired and how quickly things were. And that the safety of our staff and your staff and our firefighters, and our visitors is the reason you have to kinda pull back and some times this has to be the priority on this thing."

Chelan-Entiat District Ranger Holly Krake added that their full suppression strategy has been unwavering since day one.

Incident Command on Monday afternoon issued a Level One, "Be Alert and Prepared" evacuation advisory for Holden Village.

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A new wildfire broke out in Okanogan County Monday and was quickly extinguished, but not until it burned about 75 acres. The fire was northeast of Grand Coulee, south of Buffalo Lake on the Colville Reservation.