Pioneer wildfire moves inside Stehekin city limits

STEHEKIN, Wash. — The Pioneer wildfire near Lake Chelan is now burning inside the Stehekin city limits.

Fire information officer Brad Bramlett said the current size of the fire is 37,000 acres.

Firefighters are dealing with temperatures in the 90s and they’re keeping an eye on the winds, which tend to shift over the lake in the afternoon.

“Part of the day they will have uplake wind and then it will shift to downlake,” Bramlett told KIRO Newsradio. “As it goes downlake, those winds tend to be a little bit higher.”

Level 3 “get out now” evacuations have been issued, but many of the 80-or-so full-time residents are refusing to leave.

“Many of those folks did stay, but we’re going to do what we feel we have to do and do our firefighting efforts safely and as aggressively as possible,” Bramlett said.

In addition to ground crews, helicopters dropping water and an air tanker loaded with fire retardant will help attack the flames.

“They have what they call containment lines where they go in and rake around structures,” Bramlett explained. “They’ve got sprinklers set up. They have some hoses laid in there as well.”

Bramlett explained that fire is going to move uphill more quickly than it is going to do downhill.

“It sort of went up behind Stehekin, behind the ridge and then it’s been steadily moving down the ridge towards the community,” Bramlett said.

The Department of Natural Resources has issued a statewide burn ban restricting the use of outdoor burning, campfires, the use of charcoal briquettes, and prescribed burns on all forest lands within DNR’s fire protection, including all Washington State Parks.

Heather Bosch is an award-winning anchor and reporter on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of her stories here. Follow Heather on X, or email her here.

Contributing: Bill Kaczaraba, MyNorthwest

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