A wildfire that started near the Columbia River Gorge on Friday afternoon has grown into Washington’s largest fire, at over 11,000 acres.
Around 900 firefighters have responded to the Burdoin fire so far, and Gov. Bob Ferguson and Commissioner of Public Lands Dave Upthegrove praised their efforts Thursday morning at a news conference in White Salmon, Klickitat County.
There are four other large fires in the state, including the Bear Gulch fire in the Olympic National Forest and the Lake Spokane fire.
So far, Washington’s fire season is shaping up exactly as expected, said Ryan Rodruck, spokesperson for the Washington Department of Natural Resources. The entire state and Oregon has above-normal fire risk, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
“I would definitely caution folks that we still have a lot of fire season left to go. It is certainly no time for complacency,” he said.
While it’s too early to say exactly how many acres will burn and how many fires the state will see, around 50,680 acres have burned in about 1,034 fires. On average each year, the state has seen around 470,000 acres burned and around 1,562 ignitions.
Especially in hot and dry weather, Rodruck said most jurisdictions have fire bans and warned that the state has been seeing more (but often, smaller) fires start in Western Washington.
The Burdoin fire has destroyed around 44 structures, according to unofficial counts, and threatens around 1,443 residences, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center. An active Level 3 “Go Now” evacuation remains in the area, and around 900 people have been evacuated, officials said.
The fire is 13% contained and the cause has not been determined. Brian Gales, an incident commander with a Northwest Incident Management Team, said the fire started near a road.
Highway 14 is still closed in both directions from milepost 66 near Bingen to milepost 75.8 near Highway 142, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. Gales said firefighters are working to reopen the highway, but the closures may continue for “the next three or four days.”
Weather conditions are not expected to let up as firefighters are bracing for winds of 20 mph and gusts of up to 35 mph Thursday and overnight, which will test fire lines, said John Spencer, an operations section chief for a Northwest Incident Management Team.
Firefighters have been challenged by “steep, rugged, rocky terrain” as well as dry conditions, he said.
Ferguson, for whom this is his first fire season as governor, said at the news conference that he was impressed but “not surprised” at the deep level of organization and coordination for such a “big, complex operation.”
Upthegrove pointed to the impact recent investments have made in helping to fight the Burdoin fire, specifically helicopters and half a million dollars toward creating fire lines and fuel breaks around White Salmon. Upthegrove warned that if DNR does not see restored funding for such programs, fires in future years are “going to be larger and they’re going to cost the taxpayers a lot more money in the back end.”
This legislative session, the DNR only received $60 million for the biennium for forest health and wildfire resilience efforts like forest health treatments, which include forest thinning and home wildfire assessments. That was a reduction from the $125 million a biennium the agency was allocated in 2021.
Ferguson said officials are still assessing the budget impact from fighting the Burdoin fire and exploring federal relief.
