Entiat Fire `Beats Them All' -- Flames Race Across 54,000 Acres As Crews Try To Slow Its Spread

ENTIAT, Chelan County - The wildfire burning in the Entiat River canyon is so vicious that the firefighters are resigned to trying to slow it down rather than stop it.

The spectacular blaze is being stoked by strong winds - many of its own creation - and is racing up and down the forested hills here.

The official estimate of the fire's size swelled to 54,000 acres today, more than double an earlier estimate given this morning. The estimate was updated based on heat-detecting infrared photographs taken on a morning flight over the fire.

Safety concerns prevented firefighters and aircraft from attacking the heart of the so-called Tyee-Creek fire as it moved to within three miles of Lake Chelan, which is lined with vacation homes.

Hundreds of homes were threatened, although lakeside residents had not been ordered to leave, said Rosalie Richardson, spokeswoman for Chelan County Sheriff Dan Breda.

Thirteen homes had been destroyed, along with nearly 60 sheds and other outbuildings. U.S. Highway 97, along the west bank of the Columbia River, was closed for 35 miles between Wenatchee and Chelan to all but emergency vehicles. In addition, state Highway 971 along the south shore of Lake Chelan was closed.

The fire had reached the Columbia River at places. The fire burned though the middle of the tiny community of Ardenvoir but didn't touch any buildings.

No serious injuries have been reported - and firefighters hope to keep it that way by showing the fire the respect it commands.

"I've been fighting fires for 20 years . . . and this beats them all," said Grant Gibbs, a bulldozer driver who was building fire lines. "It just generates enough momentum in the fuels it burns that you'd have to be insane to get in front of it . . . Even air support can't get to it."

The Tyee Creek fire, about 100 miles east of Seattle, was the worst of dozens burning across more than 63,000 acres in Central and Eastern Washington. It was touched off by lightning earlier this week during a spell of hot, dry weather.

Nearly 1,500 firefighters from nine states worked against steep, rocky forest terrain to keep the fire from reaching more homes.

About 400 people had been evacuated, many of them to two shelters set up by the Red Cross.

"I would say this is a very atypical fire," said Larry Anderson of the U.S. Forest Service. "The fire is doing very spectacular things, like 500-foot flame lengths."

Along a two-lane road, the strength and speed of the fire was evident as firefighters and homeowners kept a wary eye out for flames approaching over mountain tops.

The mountain was ablaze over Rick Benedict's house, where he stood by the swing set in the back yard, able to say only, "I don't know. I just don't know," when asked what goes through a person's mind at a time like this.

From 200 yards away, across pastures where three neighbors chased a herd of cows away from the flames, the wildfire seemed to change the laws of nature.

The fire, which at one time seemed to be a thousand small flames, looked like lava streaming up the mountain. It blew against the wind, which made trees lean downhill as if anxious to escape.

The mountain's peak was hidden behind a strange curtain that seemed halfway closed between midafternoon and twilight skies. Cloudless blue skies to the left pointed the way to safety.

At another bend in the road, near where homes burned on Monday, firefighters from Monroe - among crews that have come from around the state and from as far east as Wisconsin - faced scattered fires in the brush.

One firefighter was unable to stand on the steep incline, spraying water at the flames from his knees. But the scattered fires joined forces into one huge blaze that turned pine trees into skeletons and forced the firefighters back.

Dick Kreger, of the Forest Service, said firefighters couldn't attack the fire head-on because it was charging too quickly.

Firefighters will focus on digging a protective ring around 95 square miles of sparsely populated land, north of the small town of Entiat.

The strategy means leaving 70 homes inside the circle. Kreger said firefighters would try to save those homes by covering them with foam and water and digging ditches around them.

He said he hoped winds would shift westward, pushing the fire back into itself and leaving it no place to go except the fire line. But at least for the next couple of days, Kreger said, the fire probably would continue eastward.

The fire has taken a toll on residents in this valley. City Park, at the river's edge in Entiat, has become a refuge for dozens of people who fled encroaching flames with as little as an hour's notice Monday. Frank and Coleen Wolf, both 27, were sitting outside a pup tent they are sharing with their three children and some stuffed animals provided by the Red Cross.

The Wolfs said they lost clothing and a place to stay when their friend's home burned. Frank Wolf worried about finding another job - he was doing gardening work for a neighbor whose home also burned - and getting his family in a home before winter.

"But what we've lost most of all is pride," he said. "This was such a beautiful place."

Elsewhere, two new wildfires in Kittitas County were nearly contained after forcing the evacuation of a campground and blackening at least 40 acres yesterday. Officials with the state Department of Natural Resources said fire breaks had been established around the Camp Lake and Jungle fires, which were burning in tall timber seven miles north of Cle Elum.

Ten miles northwest of Leavenworth, an 800-acre fire jumped across the Wenatchee River and Highway 2, forcing closure of a 16-mile stretch of the highway from Leavenworth to Coles Corner.

Firefighters appeared to get the upper hand yesterday on two fires that have combined to blacken more than 1,100 acres near Goldendale. Lou Torres, a spokesman for the Oregon State Department of Forestry, said fire crews had bulldozed six miles of fire lines around both the Butler Creek blaze north of Goldendale, near Brooks Memorial State Park, and the Bickleton Flats fire, burning in mostly grasslands 17 miles northeast of the city.

Wildfires remained a problem across the western United States and Canada, where summer heat, lightning strikes and generally dry weather made for troublesome conditions:

-- In Canada, fires already have burned 2 million acres - as much as last year's total - destroying 18 homes in British Columbia. The fires, most of which are in unpopulated areas, have caused no deaths.

In Alberta, 49 fires have started because of lightning in the last couple of days, the Alberta Forest Service said.

-- In Montana, the governor declared a fire emergency for 13 western counties, freeing the National Guard to support firefighters battling two major blazes and dozens of smaller ones.

Nearly 150 firefighters were attacking a 1,000-acre fire southeast of Plains, which has driven a dozen families from their homes, burning heavy timber in the Flathead National Forest.

A larger fire on the Flathead Indian Reservation near Niarada burned 3,100 acres in 24 hours, but was 80 percent contained yesterday.

-- In Oregon, where a dramatic last-minute wind shift saved all but one of several threatened homes Tuesday night, a 25,000-acre wildfire on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation remained out of control yesterday.

-- In California, workers built firebreaks yesterday around a set of fires touched off by lightning in the Klamath National Forest.

Compiled from reports from Times staff reporters Kery Murakami and Dee Norton, The Associated Press and the Yakima Herald-Republic.