Pioneer Fire on the ridge above Stehekin. Photo courtesy: Yakimaherald.com.
The Pioneer Fire watch continues as the latest draw down begins this week. Firefighters on duty in Stehekin are moving out this week with a new U.S. Forest Service Burned Area Emergency Response (BEAR) team arriving.
Chelan County Commissioner Tiffany Gering said Monday, "They're the ones that handle things like mud slides, rock slides and clean up."
Incident Command public information officer James Bartlett said the Pioneer Fire cleaned up the forest floor “litter”, underbrush and needles from trees.
"That's the kind of fire you want to see, it doesn't get into the tops of trees and incinerate things," Bartlett said Monday. "Up here in Stehekin, along the lake shore, the fire stayed on the ground, browned a few trees here and there, but by and large it cleaned up a lot of litter that was on the forest floor. Get some moisture up here and by spring it's probably going to be looking pretty good."
"What we're looking at as far as fire behavior is concerned at this point, there's some stumps, downed trees, things like that are are slowly smoldering away but we haven't really seen any smoke coming off this in a pretty good while now," Bartlett shared as he was readying to leave Stehekin.
"Depending on where you are, this (fire) season will be going on for a while," added Bartlett. "I would urge everyone to be extraordinarily careful with fire."
An after fire de-briefing meeting is being planned. Chelan County Commissioner Tiffany Gering said, "We've talked about having a meeting, not just with the forest service, DNR (Washington Department of Natural Resources) and the park service, but all of the elected officials."
Chelan County Emergency Management reported Monday night:
WYNNIE FIRE UPDATE: All fire evacuation levels have been lowered to a Level 1 fire advisory. Firefighters have been able to stop the progression of the fire and establish a fire line around it. Great job once again to our fire teams!
Just a reminder, it's still fire season out there. Stay vigilant; do not be the reason we have a late-season fire.
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