Lightning sparks new fire near Wenatchee

WENATCHEE - Lightning sparked another wildfire near Wenatchee, just half a mile from the Colockum Tarps Fire that has been burning for the past two weeks.

Crews have been making aerial water drops all day. Right now, they say it’s the only thing they can do to fight the new Mile Marker 10 Fire.

“It’s burning so quickly, moving really rapidly through grass and sage,” says public information officer Cindy Bork. “You can’t put firefighters on the ground in front of something like that.”

Floyd Morgan, who lives in one of the neighborhoods below the fire, heard the storm move through.

“I heard the big crack,” he says. “It was right here by the house. Boom!”

The storm also brought wind, causing the fire to grow to 5000 acres within hours.

“You should have seen it,” says Morgan. “It was rocking and rolling across that hillside.”

Crews were already working the nearby Colockum Tarps Fire, so they were able to move a lot of their resources quickly. But they still had to issue evacuation orders to about 80 homes.

“There’s a lot of homes northwest of the fire,” says Bork. “It’s burning up to this steep rim rock. It’s our hope we can keep it from moving down through some of the scrub and some of the sage.”

That’s what Morgan is hoping. Right now, he doesn’t think he’ll have to evacuate.

“I have a game plan if it gets too close,” he says. “I know what I’ll do.”

But he thinks another storm moving through tonight, should help firefighters get control of the fire.

“Wet it down,” he says. “As long as it ain’t a dry storm.”