Wildfires erupted in Clark County on Tuesday afternoon, challenging firefighters to respond to all of them. By 5 p.m. all were under control.
Only one structure, a backyard shed in a Vancouver neighborhood, was destroyed.
The largest wildfire consumed about 5 acres of trees and brush along Salmon Creek off Northeast 82nd Avenue, between Northeast 139th and 159th streets. It was attacked by a helicopter, local fire departments, and ground crews from the state Department of Natural Resources and Larch Corrections Center. At one point, flames were described as 40 feet high.
Battalion Chief Tim Dawdy of Clark County Fire & Rescue said that fire, which primarily burned south of Salmon Creek, is under control, though mop-up efforts may continue today. No structures were damaged.
The fire was hard to reach, according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian. As firefighters from the various agencies worked, emergency dispatchers notified neighbors about the fire but did not order any evacuations. It was a real team effort to save the homes and keep the homeowners informed, Dawdy said.
Dawdy said the fire was reported at about 2 p.m.
Dale Davis, 82, lives in a house near where the fire was burning. She returned home from grocery shopping to see the black smoke.
“I’m concerned about the embers catching one of these trees,” she said.
The neighborhood is a close-knit community with about eight homes on a private road, Davis said.
Dawdy said the cause of the fire is being investigated.
Marrion fire
Meanwhile, another fire blackened dry grass and destroyed a shed in just west of Interstate 205 in Vancouver’s Marrion neighborhood. That fire was reported at about 3:50 p.m. near Northeast 108th Avenue and 11th Street.
The property, behind houses, is laid out as a residential cul-de-sac, but no construction has taken place.
After the fire was declared under control about 5 p.m., Vancouver firefighters remained on the site operating a brush rig. They soaked down the area along the property line, marked by a chain-link fence that separates the blackened parcel from neighboring residences to the east. The houses appeared to have been scorched.
The burned shed was on the east side of that fence, in the backyard of a neighboring house. As the firefighters used the brush rig’s hose to make sure nothing was burning near the remnants of the shed, a property owner was using his garden hose to soak things down from his side of the fence.
Other fires were relatively minor. Vancouver went to at least one other fire. Meanwhile Fire District 6 extinguished a grass fire along northbound Interstate 5 in the vicinity of Northeast 179th Street that briefly blocked traffic. The fire was reported at about 2:20 p.m. and was between 400 and 500 feet long and about 40 feet wide, said Shawn Newberry, Clark County Fire District 6 operations chief.
The agency sent two engines, one brush truck and two battalion chiefs. The blaze was put out and all lanes of I-5 were reopened just after 3 p.m.
Newberry said that while he didn’t know the cause of the blaze, he advised motorists to not drag metal from trailers and to not discard cigarettes along roadways. Those are common causes for these kinds of fires, he said.
In east Clark County, Camas-Washougal firefighters were called to at least two wildfires, one near scenic Ostenson Canyon.
Many miles east of Clark County, fires were also burning in the Columbia River Gorge, causing closures along Highway 14, according to emergency radio traffic.
It was only 82 degrees in Vancouver Tuesday, with light to moderate winds. But the eruption of multiple fires illustrates how extreme the fire danger is in Southwest Washington, after days of 90-degree weather and months of lower-than-normal precipitation.
