Another Week, Another Fire

PRESCOTT - For several tense hours Monday, Teresa Price experienced a moth­er's worst nightmare. She and her husband Bruce were on one side of the fire along Harvey Shaw Road while their 19-year-old son Kyle was inside the family home on the other side of the flames and smoke.

"It's such a helpless feel­ing," said Price, who moved to the area four years ago and was at her job at Walla Walla General Hospital when she received the call about the fire. "We fear this (fire) every fall during harvest."

In the end, the Prices' son was fine as was the family home, which was shielded from the flames by firefight­ers who back burned around the structure on the 13-acre farm.

Still, it was gut-wrench­ing to the couple to see the wind fuel the blaze that consumed stubble, bush and trees across 600 acres along Highway 124 west of Prescott. The Prices' home was only one of several struc­tures that were under threat from the Harvey Shaw fire. It also came close to the historic Lamar cabin which was hand-hewn out of cot­tonwoods by George Dud­ley Goodwin in 1863.

Officials said 57 fire­fighters from all Walla Wal­la County fire districts and College Place came out to control the fast-spread­ing

fire that was started by a combine. It took six hours, and when it was all over only about 30 acres of standing grain had been de­stroyed

and an abandoned radio tower had been dam­aged. Rocky Eastman, chief for Fire District 4, said the county deployed 32 pieces of equipment, including trucks and tenders. The firebegan around 3:45 p.m. and was under control before 10 p.m. It briefly shut down the highway, which was other­wise separated from the fireby the Touchet River. It was the continuation of what has become a much more active fire season than last year, said Gay Ernst, emergency management director for the county. "This is the most likely time of year for these fires to happen," she said, attrib­uting the minimal loss of property to the fire districts' well-coordinated responses. Earlier this month, fire spread over 23,000 acres near Eureka, requiring 200 firefighters from various parts of the state to fight it. Then another firealong the Snake River consumed 3,000 acres of grassland.

The causes of fires dur­ing the past several weeks have included lightening, harvest equipment, tar­get practice and careless­ness about cigarettes. Area residents are advised to be extremely careful as it takes very little to ignite the extremely dry vegetation in the Touchet Valley.