NEAH BAY — Crews have moved into mop-up duty on the 200 Line Fire near Near Bay.
The smoldering fire was 90 percent contained as of Wednesday, and the Southwest Washington Incident Management Team planned to demobilize at 6 a.m. today, team spokesman Tim Perciful said.
A smaller incident management team will remain on site with the appropriate equipment to mop up the 41-acre fire, Perciful said.
The fire began late Saturday morning on freshly logged Makah tribal land on 200 Line Road about 2 miles southeast of Neah Bay.
Neah Bay fire crews carried out a swift initial attack, preventing the fire from spreading to the nearby forest, Perciful said.
The fire is about a mile from the nearest neighborhood, the state Department of Natural Resources has said.
Thanks tribe
“The Southwest Washington Incident Management Team would like to thank the Makah tribe for their help and hospitality,” Perciful said in a news release.
“The team is able to demobilize due to the hard work from the Makah tribe and Washington Department of Natural Resources.
“The support from the tribe was invaluable to our operation and was integral to our success of keeping the fire to 41 acres.”
DNR Deputy Supervisor Mary Verner said in a Friday news conference that there had been 747 wildfires since June 1. Those fires had burned a combined 74,000 acres.
Meanwhile, the Paradise Fire in the remote Queets River drainage deep in Olympic National Park has burned 1,700 acres of temperate rainforest over the past two months in one of the driest summers in park history, the National Park Service said in a daily update Tuesday.
Crews have confined the Paradise Fire to an area north of the Queets River and west of Bob Creek.
The lightning-triggered blaze is expected to smolder into fall.
“Currently, fire growth and smoke production is being held in check by the cool moist marine air,” the update said.
“When conditions change, it is likely that the fire will grow again.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5072, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
