Firefighters on Tuesday kept a large wildfire near the Hanford Site in Washington state within the already burned footprint. The edge of the fire area was outside the contaminated area of Hanford but within the Department of Energy facility’s security buffer, which is now managed as a national monument.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday issued a red flag fire weather warning, causing concern that fire lines might not hold in windy weather and low humidity. But by early evening Tuesday a 117-mile line around the fire had been completed and firefighters saw no flames within the line, only smoldering areas. Patches of unburned vegetation remain inside the fire footprint that could still burn and spread the blaze.
The size of the fire had been estimated at 110 square miles at the end of the weekend. But on Monday night the fire’s incident command team more than doubled the estimate to about 275 square miles. The fire had not grown much Monday or by early evening Tuesday. But the smoke had finally cleared enough Monday afternoon to allow authorities to send up a helicopter with global positioning system equipment to fly over burned areas and produce a better estimate of the size of the fire. The fire started Saturday and spread to the west toward Hanford through Monday morning.
