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Hot Weather Complicates Fire Fighting Efforts

A view of the Mills Canyon fire, north of Wenatchee, Washington.
InciWeb
A view of the Mills Canyon fire, north of Wenatchee, Washington.

Triple-digit temperatures are expected to complicate the effort to battle The Mills Canyon fire in central Washington.  

A view of the Mills Canyon fire, north of Wenatchee, Washington.
Credit InciWeb
/
InciWeb
A view of the Mills Canyon fire, north of Wenatchee, Washington.

The blaze covers about 28 square miles north of Wenatchee and is threatening hundreds of structures and has led to periodic closures of US Highway97A.

Keith Vradenburg, mayor of the small town of Entiat, Washington, said the town is thick with both firefighters and smoke.

"I can't hardly see across the Columbia River," Vradenburg said. "That's about a half mile across it from my house to the other side. So we have a lot of smoke, which we've had for the last several days."

The Mills Canyon fire is the largest of about a half dozen blazes in the Northwest. Most of the fire activity is in central and eastern Washington.

Copyright 2014 Northwest News Network

Chris Lehman graduated from Temple University with a journalism degree in 1997. He landed his first job less than a month later, producing arts stories for Red River Public Radio in Shreveport, Louisiana. Three years later he headed north to DeKalb, Illinois, where he worked as a reporter and announcer for NPR–affiliate WNIJ–FM. In 2006 he headed west to become the Salem Correspondent for the Northwest News Network.