7,000 Acres Near Hanford Go Up In Smoke

It started out with a single lightning strike during the middle of the night on July 28^th. Two and a half days and 7,000 burned acres later, fire crews were mopping up what has come to be known as the Elk Meadows fire.

For many, this fire triggered memories of the 1984 Rattlesnake Mountain fire, during which over 200,000 acres burned. For others it was yet another challenge in protecting the Hanford Site from the threat of wildland fire.

This fire was contained to the Fitzner/Eberhardt Arid Lands Ecological Reserve (FEALE), which is managed for the Department of Energy by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Agency. The Hanford Fire Department has the responsibility for firefighting efforts on the FEALE, in coordination with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife.

"Much of this area had not been burned off in a long time and the fire crews encountered lots of heavy vegetation and old-growth sagebrush," said Hanford Fire Chief Don Good. "As a result, we were fighting some pretty good-sized flames that generated lots of BTUs."

Chief Good acknowledges that the fire would not have been controlled as quickly as it was had it not been for the 75 emergency responders who came from surrounding fire departments and fire districts and joined Hanford firefighters in conquering this blaze on the FEALE.

"As the Incident Command agency, we called on our mutual aid partners for help," he said. "Fire crews from the Richland and Kennewick city fire departments, Benton County Fire Districts 1, 2, and 4 , and Franklin County Fire District 3 spent many hours on the fire line, working side by side with Hanford’s firefighting crews.

"That’s what mutual aid agreements are all about – working together to achieve a common objective," he said.. "In addition, we also called on the DynCorp Tri-Cities heavy equipment operators to establish fire breaks with their heavy equipment."

Through the efforts of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife representatives who were on scene, two Bureau of Land Management hand crews from the Snake River Valley traveled here and performed some remediation work where the fire breaks had been cut.

Good concluded with this caution, "The high temperatures we have experienced, along with the thick undergrowth of very dry and highly volatile vegetation, are really setting the stage for very dangerous wildland fire possibilities. The Hanford Fire Department urges site workers to report any smoke or fire that they see by dialing ‘911’ (or 373-3800 if using a cellular phone).

"It’s better to make a report and have the professionals check out the situation than to assume that it’s nothing and we suddenly have an inferno on our hands."

Originally published in the August 10, 1998, issue of the Hanford Reach