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Charred Homes Left In Fire's Wake

One home was destroyed and another was badly damaged in a Mason County wildfire that started as a small grass fire and then spread to mobile homes at Evergreen Mobile Estates.

Fire investigators said the devastating brush fire was sparked by a match or a cigarette.

Near Morton in Lewis County, three homes were still threatened Thursday by flames from a 20-acre wildfire that was about 60 percent contained.

Fire danger was so bad that one of Western Washington's biggest private landowners closed all its forests to hiking and biking, KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reported.

Olympic Resources Management closed 71,000 acres in Kitsap, Mason, Jefferson and Clallam counties.

Meanwhile, lightning created by the smoke from an Eastern Washington wilderness blaze sparked a small fire that burned near the Canadian border Thursday.

The spot fire near Bald Mountain in the Pasayten Wilderness was burning about three miles south of the border, and about two miles north of the main Farewell Creek fire, spokeswoman Christy Covington said Thursday.

It was believed to be only about an acre, but fire officials were monitoring it as well as two similar spot fires south of the main blaze.

The Farewell Creek fire, which had blackened 73,640 acres since lightning started it June 29, continued to burn slowly up the Spanish Creek drainage toward Canada, she said.

Conditions near Ashnola Pass, on one part of the fire's northern flank, had improved so much that fire managers considered sending crews in on Friday to try to stem the fire's progress, spokesman Roland Emetaz said.

"We may have some options to tie it off there. We thought we might be able to until the fire had a run two days ago," he said. "Now again, it looks like we might be able to put a fork in it there."

The main fire's 30,000 foot plume of smoke mixed with colder air aloft to create the lightning that caused the spot fires, he said.

High temperatures, low relative humidity and unstable air patterns created by the fire were causing extreme fire conditions.

There were 1,314 people working the fire Thursday. It had cost nearly $26.7 million to fight.

Conditions are so dry in Eastern Washington that officials in the Colville National Forest considered closing the forest to all public access.

Officials measure the relative dryness of a forest by its potential to burn quickly, called the Energy Release Component. On Thursday, the fire rating index for the Colville National Forest climbed to a new high, fire staff officer Al Garr said.

"Historically the Colville National Forest has an average ERC value of 50 in early August. Today, the observed ERC value was 90," Garr said.

Those levels are significantly higher than in 1994, when the Copper Butte Fire burned 10,580 acres and in 2001, when the Mt. Leona Fire burned 5,911 acres, he said.

Forest officials said they would evaluate the need to elevate forest restrictions on both commercial and recreational uses if conditions continue to worsen, Garr said.