Washington wildfires officially the largest in state history
Wildfires in Washington are officially the largest in state history, with the fires now covering 256,567 acres, and reports that they could burn for several more months.  The causes of the wildfires are due to a mixture of scattered lightening strikes, high winds, human-caused and an extended drought causing President Obama to declare a state of emergency in Washington.  Air quality and visibility are also affecting residents and causing unhealthy conditions with the National Weather Service issuing warnings of easterly winds blowing smoke across into the west and beyond.  
John Belles built a concrete dome and turned it into a house 15 years ago because the manufacturers told him it was fireproof. Now he was getting the opportunity to test that claim.

A wall of flame leaping at least twice the height of a man was driving across his valley outside of the town of Omak, Washington, in the heart of the largest number of wildfires in the state’s history.

The five major blazes in the region around Omak, known as the Okanogan Complex fire, have a fire line – the total length the flames extend – of more than 1,000 miles. Only 100 miles is under control. Close to quarter of a million acres is burned or burning.

At times, the air in the town is so thick with smoke that drivers use their headlights in the middle of the day.

“I was a little disappointed in the fire service,” said Belles, standing on the charred hillside next to the dome in his semi-rural neighbourhood on the edge of town.

“There were three helicopters dropping water in that field over there but they didn’t come anywhere near me. They could have taken a thousand gallons of water and just intercepted the fire before it got to my place.”

John Belles stands on a scorched hill overlooking his concrete dome house. Photograph: Chris McGreal/Guardian

Instead, Belles got his own hoses out.

“I hosed myself down, all over my body, and started hosing the buildings down. I hosed the north side of the dome as much as possible. With the heat, it’s going to evaporate pretty fast. For whatever good it did, I hosed the vegetation,” he said. “But once the fire was 50 yards away, there was nothing I could do. You’re just putting your life in jeopardy for nothing. Then you take shelter, and whatever happens, happens.”

Belles, who lives alone and describes himself as an inventor, could have fled like many others in the area who followed the official warnings to get out of their homes. But he’s not that kind of man.



He said he had asked a passing firefighter if he knew how hot it would get and whether he would be able to breathe. The firefighter couldn’t give an answer, and Belles concluded the man didn’t know much about fire. So he shut himself in the dome and waited.

“The flames were above the window. That’s got to be 12ft or more. All around the building,” he said. “It was incredibly hot but the house did what it said it would do. They said it was nonflammable, and it was.”

The fire knocked out the power, destroying the electricity junction box, but that was it. Belles borrowed a generator and has stayed in his home while he makes the repairs himself. Now the dome sits in the midst of a vast charred landscape that is getting bigger by the hour.



The wildfires are around Omak on three sides and growing by the day. Over the weekend, the total area covered by the fires in this part of the state grew by 60,000 acres to close to 250,000 acres. That’s about half of the total area caught up in wildfires across the state. Additional wildfires are raging in California, Idaho and Oregon.



Extended drought and lightning strikes have kindled fires sweeping through sage brush and forest, prompting President Obama to declare a state of emergency in Washington.

No one can say how many homes have been lost, although about 5,000 are under direct threat. Some officials put the figure in the region around Omak at about 100, including a Buddhist monastery. And the human toll has been high. Three firefighters died in the flames after their vehicle crashed and they were unable to get away from the flames. Five other firefighters have been injured over the past week.

Thousands of people have been forced out of their homes. Local hotels are packed with the displaced and out-of-town firefighters. The more fortunate, with caravans and RVs, have moved into local campsites abandoned by tourists and shopping-strip car parks. One elderly man, an octogenarian who had nowhere else to go, is being put up in the local Home Depot store. He has a bed of pallets in one of the aisles.

More than 1,000 firefighters, including from the National Forest Service, the national guard and volunteers from as far away as Missouri, are combatting the flames. They expect to be bolstered by crews from Australia and New Zealand in the coming days.

Inmates from Washington state prisons are also out fighting fires.

“They’re trained up because they have the time to get the training,” said Joe Smillie, of the Washington department of natural resources. Other prisoners are serving as cooks for the out-of-town firefighters camped at a local fairground. They are fed 8,000 calories a day to get them through gruelling 12- to 16-hour shifts.

No one is talking about beating the fire.

“The scope of this is growing by the minute,” said Todd Pechota, the local commander. “It’s unrelenting. When you do catch a break, it’s a short break. You get it for a day and the next day something else changes. There’s a long road ahead.

“We’re in a total defensive mode. We have to be smart. We have to clearly define our opportunities for success. We can invest limited resources and be successful.”

Winning is counted in small victories: a life saved here, a house there, even as the flames continue their relentless path with no end in sight.

“It’s like eating an elephant,” said Larry Trapp, head of air firefighting operations out of Omak airport. “You’ve got to eat little pieces and you just keep biting away at it until you win.”

Earth, wind and fire: ‘It looked like a wasteland’

Wildfires light up the ridge above Omak. Photograph: Genna Martin/AP

When a final victory comes, it will be delivered by rain or a dramatic change in the weather – something far beyond the firefighters’ control. In the meantime, firefighters such as Matt Reidy give thanks for the individual victories. And so does a young couple out on Salmon Creek Road.

Reidy, a Forest Service ranger turned deputy incident commander for the fire, was chasing the flames when he spotted them licking their way over a ridge behind a house. He was shocked to discover the owners still at home.

“I drove up this road, realised the fire was just starting to crest this ridge right here,” he said, standing in front of the burned-out house. “Within a minute the fire was over the top. The fire had already established itself at the top of the ridge. They were in the house. They couldn’t see the fire coming over the ridge. They had no idea how close the fire was.”

Reidy told the couple to run.

“They picked up their belongings, just what they could hold, threw it in their car and they left,” he said.

Within minutes the house was engulfed. All that remains are three tall chimney stacks and a large stone archway.

“The fire was burning at such an intensity. There were 50ft to 100ft flame lengths coming down here. Winds in excess of 35mph,” said Reidy. “I’m really glad that they’re safe. It makes me personally feel good that I was able to save human lives. It makes me sad to see a historic structure lost.”

The remains of the house along the ridge in Omak. Photograph: Chris McGreal for the Guardian

Reidy is from Omak and so the destruction has added poignance. His house is a block south of the town’s airport and his family has been forced to evacuate three times amid approaching fire.

Omak airport is the base for helicopters hauling giant buckets of water and for retardant-dropping planes. Just how close the fire got can be seen in the scorched earth and the telephone poles a few steps from the airport entrance, seared along half of their length.

“Ten thousand gallons of jet fuel in one tanker down there and the fire’s 25ft away: it makes you a little nervous,” said Trapp, head of the Rocky Mountain Overhead Team. “We fought fire right over there and right over there, with the aircraft.”

Fire retardant dropped on one side of the airport left a wide red line on the access road and stained gates and fence posts. On the other side, a farm with bales of straw piled high and machinery in the fields remained untouched.

Trapp’s team fights fires in five western states, chasing the flames where they are most needed.

“We’ve been dealing with conditions like this across the west. We just came off an incident in Idaho where the fire burned eight and a half miles in four hours,” said Trapp, a former firefighter from Cody, Wyoming – the town founded by and named after the 19th-century cowboy showman Buffalo Bill Cody.

The helicopters can haul up to 2,000 gallons of water. Trapp makes a point of saying that teams try not to drop it on houses.

“We have a history of putting holes through roofs or collapsing roofs, especially when we’re using large helicopters. You can blow all the windows out. Every now and again we do that but it’s not by plan. It’s more by accident,” he said.

Air tankers – converted C-130s which fly troops and DC-10 passenger planes – drop even larger quantities, but they come from a base in Oregon because Omak airport’s runway isn’t strong enough to handle them.

“They sink through it when they’re loaded,” said Trapp.

More aircraft are on their way from Colorado and Wyoming but National Guard helicopters were forced to turn back on Sunday because the pilots could not see their way through the thick smoke.

Smoke from the wildfires has the potential to cause aircraft to run into each other during water-dropping missions. Photograph: Bettina Hansen/AP

If it’s not the smoke, it’s the wind. On Friday, high winds, gusting up to 50mph, forced pilots to cut the amount of water they could carry.

The firefighters were praying for the winds to drop. They did over the weekend, but without them, the still air filled with smoke, and pilots could barely see a few feet in front of them – let alone the ground. There’s also a danger in air thick with smoke that aircraft could run into each other. Planes fly much faster than helicopters. So nothing took off.

That left the ground crews to fight the flames on their own.

Reidy said his men have typically been working 16-hour days, sometimes longer. “On the couple of days preceding this, I was working 18 or 19 hours. I had to take a couple of hours off just to reset myself. After a while you lose cognitive ability. You have to get some sleep,” he said.

The local authorities put out a call for volunteers. Zac Yamery, 22, turned up for the training session at city hall. He works for a logging firm but the fire has shut it down for now.

“The fire was right down by our job site so we had to move equipment away, machines that cut trees and drag wood and load log trucks, out in the forest. Other than that, I’ve been helping my friends protect their homes,” he said. “I’ve had a couple of friends that live on the outskirts of town that have burned and I’ve been up there trying to help them out already. It looked like a wasteland. Nothing. Just ash and dust. Houses and everything gone. Burned.

“We’re out there one night ’til 3am shoveling dirt on the fire. It was right at my feet. I helped another friend of mine evacuate because the fire was 100 yards away.”

Pechota said there is a long road ahead.

“We have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us,” he said.

Reidy agreed.

“This will be an extended period of time when we will continue to fight fire. The predictions for September are equally dry and hot. I fully expect that we’ll still be fighting fire well into next month,” he said. “Many of us have been doing this for many years, and we know that this is more of a marathon than it is a quick dash.”