Farmers Help Contain Whetstone Fire

DAYTON - A fire believed to have been sparked by a lawn mower threatened two homes and burned 250 acres near the county line off Whetstone Road north of the Touchet River valley Sunday. It destroyed a garden shed, scorched the side of a pickup truck and burned 50 acres of standing grain.

It was the first serious fire of the summer in the territory covered by Walla Walla County Fire District 2 based in Waitsburg, even though the blaze started on the Columbia side of the county line.

Dozens of firefighters from seven area districts and several local farmers battled for four hours to get the wind-fed blaze under control, then had to return late at night to douse a few new flames from the old fire.

"We needed all the help we could get," District 2 Captain Brian Callahan said. "It took a lot of effort."

Callahan, who left command of the fire to Columbia County Fire District 3 Captain Jeremy Phinney because Phinney's unit arrived on the scene first, said authorities are "99 percent sure" the incident started when Dave Koschmeder was mowing his lawn and may have hit a rock, causing a spark to ignite the vegetation in or around his garden.

With wind gusts of up to 20 miles per hour, the flames quickly spread and found their way into the dry surrounding landscape.

"It's a mess," said Koschmeder, who was wetting a burn area next to his home of more than two decades, while his five-acre property was invaded by crisscrossing fire trucks and tenders trying to corral the flames that spread in several directions late Sunday afternoon.

Koschmeder's wife Joyce watched with concern from atop the driveway as her husband tried to put out some of the flames around the property's old barn. She had been taking an afternoon nap when the fire broke out and remembered first noticing it "at the end of the garden."

After crews contained the flames around the Koschmeders' residence at 1005 Whetstone, they shifted their resources to the McMunns' five-acre home about half a mile east on the edge of the standing wheat field by now ablaze on a driving wind. The dry, mature grain seemed to provide the perfect fuel for the fire whose flames had the intensity of a gas fire.

"It was very hot," said Callahan, who explained the flames came through twice - once fed by the heads at the top of the wheat plants and once burning the remaining stubble.

By this point at least one local farmer, reportedly Dave Carlton, had begun to disk a lane of wheat to create a fire break around the McMunns' home and adjacent standing acreage at risk. Carlton raced back and forth in his tractor to stay ahead of the spreading flames, while Steve McMunn wetted the edge of his lawn with his garden hose and Joan recalled when she first learned there was a fire near the couple's home.

"I was coming back from Walla Walla on Lower Waitsburg Road and saw the direction the smoke was coming from and of course I know where my place is," she said after the firefighters had successfully stopped the fire's advance towards her home.

"Thank the Lord or house is fine," said McMunn, who grew up the historic turnof the-century home at 905 Whetstone Road. "I hope nobody had the lose anything personal in the fire."

More farmers joined the fight as the fire crews tried to stay ahead of the blaze working its way up the ridge towards the wheat fields between Whetstone and Sorghum Hollow. They disked a 40-foot swath in the wheat below near the ridge overlooking the two threatened homes before the fire trucks back burned a lane of about 100 yards to take away the fire's fuel.

"It made all the difference in the world," Callahan said about the farmers' assistance in containing the fire. "It helped us put a stop to it."

He credited Carlton, Phil Howard and Dave McKinley with coming to his units' aide.

Halting the fire before it jumped the ridge to fields up above was critical, local observers said, because the hills between Whetstone and Sorghum hollows contain several miles of continuous wheat fields in which a fire would have been much more difficult to stop.

In the aftermath of Sunday's fire, Callahan said the Koschmeders were lucky not to lose their home, which is bordered to the west by a creek bed with shrubs and tall trees. The prevailing winds pushed the flames up and around the structures, coming within three feet of the property's barn, he said.

With the first serious fire in the area starting mid August, this year's fire season is later than normal. It's unclear whether the cooler summer temperatures will make for fewer fires or the season is simply delayed.

But Callahan said a lot of the area's vegetation is still green, helping limit the risk and extent of August fires.

"We're about a month behind," he said. "The fuel load is there, but it's still green."

Callahan said the fire was called in at 3:48 p.m. and contained by 7:53 p.m. The resources used for the effort included six trucks from Walla Walla's District 2, six from Columbia County's District 3, three from Columbia County's District 1 (Starbuck), two each from Walla Walla's District 8 and 4, and one each from Walla Walla's District 7 (Prescott) and District 1 (Eureka).