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Soldiers roll out to help battle blaze

Aug-16-2006 » Filed Under: Homefront

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MICHAEL GILBERT; The News Tribune

About 550 Fort Lewis soldiers set out by bus Monday to join crews fighting the nation’s largest active wildfire.
The Tripod Complex fire near Winthrop has burned more than 83,400 acres in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, officials said Monday.

That’s about the size of Fort Lewis, where the soldiers of “Task Force Blaze” spent Sunday learning firefighting basics before leaving Monday for Winthrop in north-central Washington.

They’ll get two more days of training there before joining the 2,300 civilians battling the three-week-old fire, likely Thursday, according to officials at the National Interagency Firefighting Center in Boise.

The center directs the federal response to wildfires across the United States. The Tripod Complex was by far the largest of hundreds that officials were tracking there Monday.

It continues to threaten some homes and is burning in heavy timber northeast of Winthrop, officials said.

Jim Archambeault, an information officer at the Tripod fire, said teams Monday continued to burn out brush and timber and other fuel between the edge of the fire and containment lines that crews are digging. Continued progress depends on the weather, he said.

“Today was a good day,” Archambeault said. “We’re expecting a small cold front tomorrow, so we’re crossing our fingers about how much wind we’re going to get.”

Officials estimated the blaze was about 25 percent contained, but that it won’t be fully contained until October.

The Fort Lewis troops are expected to be on the job for up to 30 days, said Maj. Cathy Wilkinson, a spokeswoman at the Army post...

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