A weekend wildfire on Gable Mountain within the Energy Department’s Hanford Site in Washington state was brought under control within a day, officials said this week
The fire was ignited Saturday night by a lightning strike and burned roughly 5,500 acres before being contained by 8 p.m. local time Sunday night, said Reneé Brooks, spokeswoman for contractor Mission Support Alliance. The Leidos-led vendor provides various landlord services, including fire crews, for the Hanford Site.
The entire burn area was on the site. The size of the fire area was originally estimated at 9,000 acres, but that figure was reduced after review of GPS tracking technology, Brooks said in a Tuesday email.
“It was not near any facilities or buildings,” Brooks said. “Some roads were temporarily closed as a safety precaution. Wind and terrain were both challenges.”
The Hanford Fire Department was assisted in dousing the blaze by other MSA workers at Hanford, along with crews from five local fire departments, the spokeswoman said.
By Monday afternoon, the traffic access restrictions were lifted, according to the Hanford website. Gable Mountain is located about 34 miles northwest of Richland, Wash.
The Hanford Site is entering the second week of Phase 1 remobilization after being on minimal staffing inside the fence starting in late March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The former plutonium manufacturing complex is believed to have had no more than 25% of its 11,000-member workforce on-site during the period.
Bechtel said last week only 300 of its normal 3,000-person workforce building the Waste Treatment Plant have been on-site during the past two months. In a Thursday memo to workers, Mission Support Alliance said it was bringing back between 125 and 150 workers during the first two weeks of Phase 1. It is believed that MSA employs about 1,900 people at Hanford.
