Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Top: View from a plane as a 3,000-acre blaze burns near Starbuck Sunday just off Little Goose Dam Road. Bottom: Hundreds of fire fighters camped out at the Prescott school over the weekend while helping fight the huge Eureka fire.
Volunteer fire fighters in the Touchet Valley spent a weary weekend battling blaze upon blaze as foul weather, careless drivers and faulty machinery conspired to keep emergency personnel on their toes from one end of the valley to the other.
Times correspondent Laverne Mayberry, of Prescott, reported that close to 200 firefighters from across the state, 40 engines and a helicopter
were called in to help contain a fire that raged over 23,000 acres near Eureka over the weekend. More than half a dozen Walla Walla County Fire Districts were on scene aided by districts as near as Waitsburg and Columbia County and as far away as Gig Harbor.
Prescott School grounds and shower facilities were turned into the command center for the firefighters, and the baseball field was used for tents and other sleeping quarters, Mayberry reported. Some of the fire fighters pulled out Sunday evening and the last were gone by Monday. For volunteers in Starbuck who responded to the Eureka fire, however, the weekend wasn't over yet. Fire Chief Tom Hawks reported that after his crew returned home early Saturday, they were all called out for another fire along the Snake River late Sunday where he believes a careless motorist may have tossed out a cigarette butt and sparked a blaze along Little Goose Dam Road that consumed close to 3,000 acres of grassland. Starbuck fire fighters from Columbia County Fire District #1 were aided in this fire fight by volunteers from Dayton and Waitsburg fire districts. Dayton fire fighters from Columbia County Fire District #3 came to Starbuck's aid on the heels of fighting their own fire on top of King Grade, about 10 miles north of Dayton on Friday night.
This combine fire may have started when faulty electronics ignited chaff on the back of a combine and spread to the surrounding stubble, about 30 acres of grain and close to 50 acres of pasture, Turner said. The Dayton fire, which started at about 6 p.m. and was extinguished by around 11 p.m., was on land owned by Dayton farmer John Laib.
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