Drought turns region into tinderbox

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WINTHROP, Okanogan County — The fires raging north and south of here could be just the beginning of a long and very hot summer for Eastern Washington.

The state's dry side has had less-than-average rainfall for nearly three years, with this past winter being the second-driest in a half-century. The forests are thick with tinder-dry wood, including large logs that can add a new level of power to a wildfire.

All that's needed is a spark and much of the region could go up like a Roman candle.

"If the right conditions are there, you're just waiting for the ignition," said Nancy Lull, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. "The lightning is the big unknown."

The Libby South and Thirty Mile fires near Winthrop marked an early start to the fire season, which typically begins around July 20. The season also is likely to last longer, possibly into September, experts say.

"It's been going through a phase," said Mike Fitzpatrick, head of predictive services for the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center in Portland. "It was moderately dry, then severely dry. Now it's extremely dry."

Making matters worse is the type of terrain that has dried out over the past 30 months.

Broad, accessible lowlands grew parched first, creating fires such as the 191,000-acre tempest that swept last year across the grass and brush of the Hanford nuclear reservation.

Now, add steep and remote timberlands like those in the 12,000 acres burning north and south of here since last week. The 8,200-acre Thirty Mile Fire led to four deaths in the canyon-like confines of the Chewuch River.

Such challenging terrain can require lots of firefighters and more time to control the blazes. Congress has more than doubled the nation's firefighting budget, but a few heavy fires can strain personnel.

"You only need four or five big fires tying up 50 crews each and you've tied up half the federal resources in the country," said Fitzpatrick.

The number of acres of burned U.S. Forest Service lands in Washington is just a little more than half the 10-year average for this time of year. The lightning that has come into the region has been accompanied by monsoonal moisture that came in off the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of California before sweeping north.

"We've been fortunate that most of these storms have had some rain with them," said Rick Ochoa, the National Interagency Fire Center's fire-weather program manager. Even so, the storms sparked several fires across Eastern Washington as they passed through early Friday. That's an indication of just how dry fuels are, Ochoa said.

Next week should turn cooler but windy as low pressure comes down from the Gulf of Alaska. After that, the region should be in a pattern of warming and more drying, Ochoa said.

"What we're looking for as a whole is for the summer to be warmer and drier than normal," he said.

Complicating matters are logs of 3 to 8 inches in diameter. While they typically have a 15 percent moisture content this time of year, they are now 10 percent in Eastern Washington, three points below what Ochoa called "the break" point where they create hotter, more aggressive fires.

Because the heavier fuels create so much heat, they are harder for crews to work near and require more burnouts — pieces of ground that are intentionally lit to burn back into a fire and contain it.

A burnout can create a precarious situation, said Fitzpatrick of the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center. The rising column of smoke can get so dense it actually overcomes the rising heat, slamming it back down to the ground "like a piston" and pushing air and fire out the sides.

"It's a rare event, but firefighters have been killed in exactly that scenario," Fitzpatrick said.

Typically, 95 percent of fires are stopped by initial attack crews, with the other 5 percent requiring the extra engines, tankers, helicopters and crews in the nation's 11 fire regions.

But with so much more fuel, Ochoa said, a fire that typically might be less than an acre can quickly grow to 10 or 50 acres.

"You're going to need more resources to deal with fires in a drought season," he said. "You'll have more fires. You'll have larger fires that move faster. It compounds itself."

July and August "are our highest two months" for lightning activity in Washington, said Greg Sinnet, chief meteorologist for the state Department of Natural Resources and a longtime fire-weather forecaster.

Doubly worrisome is the frequent phenomenon of dry lightning, which comes without rain just as 100-degree temperatures nose from Yakima to Spokane in July and August.

Lightning causes as many as 30 percent of the 1,000 to 1,200 fires annually on the 12.5 million acres of DNR-protected wildland, Sinnet said.

By September, lightning isn't the problem; the enemy then is wind. As the seasons shift, the weather changes from more mellow troughs of low pressure to "bombs," or quick, violent changes, Sinnet said.

Eastern Washington last year escaped the heavy toll wildfires took in Montana and Idaho, where resources were so strained that the military and crews from Canada, Australia and New Zealand were brought in. Some fires were simply left to burn.

Congress has since appropriated an extra $1.8 billion, raising the national firefighting budget to $2.9 billion. An extra 8,000 firefighters have been hired, raising the number of available firefighters to 28,000.

Seattle Times staff reporter Chris Solomon contributed to this story.

Eric Sorensen can be reached at (206) 464-8253 or esorensen@seattletimes.com.