"It's been a long season" - Incident Commander on the country's top wildfire priority

Firefighters working the growing southern sections of the Lower Sugarloaf Fire, Oct. 6. Photo courtesy: Andy Lyon.

Due to it growing an estimated one thousand acres a day, the Lower Sugarloaf Fire, burning west of Entiat, is the number one wildfire incident in the country. Over 1,400 firefighters were working the fire Monday.

"It's been a long season for many of us," said Sugarloaf Fire Incident Commander Tim Sampson.

Firefighters concentrating their efforts Monday on solidifying a fire buffer on the southern flank of the fire.

"This part of the fire, the southeast part, is definitely the tough part," said a fire manager at a community meeting in Cashmere last night. "The upper part (northwest portion of the fire) was in really good shape. All that area is in what we call repair status. After these fires we come in and try to take down the fire lines and try to repair things to make them look as if a fire had never been there."

 Fire managers said at an operations briefing early Monday that it’s a double edge sword as smoke diminishes, "we'll seen some pretty good spikes in temperatures (on the fire) and drops in RH (relative humidity) and we'll kinda see the opposite up on the ridge tops."

"Please make sure we're not normalizing risk," Sampson told firefighters. "I know it's easy to get tunnel vision this late in the season. Keep your eye on the ball, and ultimately we want to make sure you get home to your families at the end of the day. So, thank you for your work."

Lower Sugarloaf Fire updates here.

Labor Mountain Fire updates here.