State firefighters battling 7,000 acre wildfire in northwest Whitman County on Friday
Aug. 20—State firefighters, including airplanes and engines, are battling a 7,000-acre fire that sparked Thursday afternoon in northwest Whitman County.
There were no evacuations in place Friday afternoon for the Wagner Road Fire burning south of state Route 23 and west of the unincorporated town of Ewan, said Guy Gifford, community resiliency assistant division manager for the Washington Department of Natural Resources. An estimate of the fire's size had grown from 4,000 acres Thursday evening to 7,376 acres Friday afternoon, which Gifford said was because of a more accurate map of the fire.
The fire was reported just after 2 p.m. Thursday and is burning in a mixture of field crops, grasses and trees, Gifford said. The blaze grew rapidly due to high grasses, sloping fields and weather conditions he said.
Temperatures are expected to climb into the upper 90s on the Palouse on Friday, but Gifford said the fire wasn't receiving direct sunlight Friday morning. State resources were mobilized to fight the fire at the request of Whitman County officials late Thursday.
No roads were closed as of Friday afternoon. The cause of the fire is under investigation. The fire was at zero containment as of Friday afternoon.
A crew of more than 100 people were fighting the fire Friday morning, Gifford said.
Smoke from the fire was blowing into Ritzville, causing localized dips in air quality, according to the state's Department of Ecology. The air quality index there, and in Spokane, had reached the "moderate" level as of Friday afternoon, indicating potential health concerns for those unusually sensitive to pollution.
