More than 84,000 acres have burned in North Central Washington between the Lower Sugarloaf and Labor Mountain Fires, both of which are now nearing full containment after almost three months. With containment nearly complete, authorities have begun reopening roads and assessing property and environmental impacts, marking a shift from emergency response to recovery.
The Lower Sugarloaf Fire is 99% contained and has burned approximately 42,980 acres, according to Inciweb; crews are now replanting vegetation. “The focus there was to continue with seeding some of those road beds and some of the dozer lines,” said Operations Chief Brett Thomas with Northwest Team 3.
The Labor Mountain Fire has burned 42,967 acres and is 92% contained. Fire officials say they’re making the “finishing touches” to the fire. “We were able to complete the mechanical work that we were doing on some repairs and also implement some of the work our hand crews were working on,” Thomas said. “We’ll be putting the finishing touches on the repair work that our incident management or organization was tasked with accomplishing.”
Both fires were discovered Sept. 1 and were caused by lightning. In Tuesday’s update, the management team said command would return to local units and that it doesn’t expect further fire growth with the forecasted wet weather later this week.
The U.S. Forest Service completed the Burned Area Emergency Response assessment for the Lower Sugarloaf Fire last week, a post-wildfire environmental assessment that identifies emergency threats caused by the fire. This week, officials will conduct the burned area assessment for the Labor Mountain Fire.
