|
Crews getting handle on resort-area fire
|
By
Associated Press
ARIZONA DAILY WILDCAT
|
Monday August 20, 2001 |
LEAVENWORTH, Wash. - Fire crews hoped to make headway yesterday on containing the 6,500-acre Icicle Complex fire near this resort town.
Lines dug by firefighters on the heavily forested eastern slopes of the Cascade Range will link up with roads, trails and land burned over in 1994, a landmark year here for wildfires.
The blaze was one of eight charring more than 106,000 acres yesterday in Washington state and one of 33 searing more than 380,000 acres in seven western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
On ABC's "This Morning," Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber urged Congress and President Bush to take more aggressive steps over the next 10 years to improve the health of Northwest forests.
Instead of making emergency appropriations after massive fires - $1.6 billion was appropriated to address last summer's western blazes - he recommended long-term investments to "save the country billions of dollars, and I would say hundreds of lives, over time."
At issue, Kitzhaber said, is a century of aggressive fire suppression that has created "a huge fuel load" in the nation's forests. He recommends thinning, prescribed burns and "some repairing and restoration" to restore forest health.
"There's a great opportunity to bridge the gaps here between the industry and the environmental community and produce a very healthy ecosystem out here in the West," Kitzhaber said.
Back home in Oregon, firefighters contained two of the state's major wildfire clusters Saturday - the 127,552-acre Lakeview Complex and the 8,884-acre Baker Complex - leaving nine active fires on just over 105,000 acres.
Nevada still had the most acreage involved in active fires - 107,000 acres seared by two blazes.
Meanwhile, in the mountain slopes above this Bavarian-theme community, crews were working to carve a 30-mile buffer around the fire - of dirt, pavement and blackened remnants of the 1994 fire season.
"We're getting a good secure line, tying into old roads, old trails and old burned areas from 1994," said Icicle Fire information officer Art Wirtz.
"The old burn" - recent enough to deprive this year's flames of fuel - "is very important."
The fire, which has forced evacuation of 50 homes and has the residents of scores more prepared for a quick exit, could potentially put about 2,000 homes and businesses here at risk. No homes had been destroyed, though, and no injuries were reported.
Nine homes have been lost in the past week to the state's largest fire, the 52,100-acre Virginia Lakes Complex on the Colville Indian Reservation. However, 22 were saved Saturday, a spokesman said, crediting crews charged with structure protection.
More than two-dozen homes in the path of the 5,000-acre Goodnoe Fire have been evacuated since that blaze started Friday in the agricultural land near Goldendale, just above the Columbia River.
|
